All 13-year-old girls like to be a little secretive but Eleanor Simmonds's secrets are more intriguing than most. Her performance in the Paralympics in Beijing was a stand-out event. Her sheer delight at unexpectedly winning a gold medal in the 100 metres freestyle was, for many spectators, the most emotional moment of the Games. Her second gold, in the 400 metres freestyle, earmarked her as a serious contender for 2012 and her triumph improved the reputation of a Paralympic sport whose rules and regulations were at times bewildering.

Simmonds's goals for London 2012 must therefore be reasonably straightforward - after all nobody could accuse her of precocity if she wanted at least to repeat her feats at the Water Cube - but she will not reveal what they are.

“I have new targets but I'm keeping them to myself,” she said. “I'm not telling anybody, not even my coach or my friends or my Mum and Dad. I like to keep my targets to myself. I'm not superstitious, I just prefer it like that.”

She is open, though, about who she would like to sponsor her. She has a weakness for Louis Vuitton handbags and said that it would be “beyond my dreams” if the brand showed an interest.

Britain's youngest individual gold medal-winner is back at school enjoying PE and science - she has an ambition to be a forensic scientist and is a big fan of CSI, the television series. She did not attempt to sneak back into the real world via the side entrance but arrived for her first day of the new term in a limousine and was greeted by cheering staff and pupils. “That was really good,” Simmonds said. “Everyone was behind me all the way and they were all saying ‘well done.'”

She is stopped in the street and in supermarkets and says that it is “a bit weird” to be asked for her autograph. “I'm not a famous person, not a celebrity,” she said. But recently she was out with her friends and they thought they had lost her when, in fact, she had become surrounded by shoppers who wanted to take her photograph. “My friends were all laughing at me,” she said.

She has made an appearance on Blue Peter but “it was a bit tiring really; they kept having rehearsals”.

Simmonds had a dream before the Olympics that she might win silver, so presumably these days her dreams are full of gold imagery. “Not really,” she said. “I've stopped thinking about that now. I'm more likely to dream about schoolwork.”

Simmonds has a gentle Midlands accent, having been brought up in Walsall. The family moved to Swansea last summer to further her swimming career; there are no 50-metre pools in Birmingham. It was not a difficult decision because her parents, Val and Steve, are self-employed, in environmental consultancy. “And I needed the next step up, I needed something extra,” she said.

It is tempting to build a fairytale around Simmonds. She was born with dwarfism and has become the face of Paralympic sport at 13. Instead of being overawed by her first Olympics, she smashed her world record by seven seconds in the 400 metres freestyle. Her mother describes her as doggedly determined. “Being small never stopped her doing anything and there was never anything she felt she couldn't do,” Val said.

Taking her first swimming lessons, she wanted to move up the classes at the same rate as her friends, which her parents said was possible if she trained twice as hard as they did. So she did - the first sign that she might excel in the pool. The second came when Simmonds watched the Athens Paralympics in 2004 and was inspired by Nyree Lewis, who won two gold medals, two silvers and a bronze in the pool. “Nyree made me want to swim,” she said.

Simmonds has four older siblings. “My sister Katie used to be good at swimming but she was not competitive,” Eleanor said. Katie was in floods of tears when Eleanor won her first medal. “That stopped me from crying too much as I had to comfort her,” Val said. “But I had to go for a walk on my own to take it all in. It's too scary if you look at the whole picture, almost too much to take in.”

Simmonds trains nine times a week, each session lasting for up to two hours. “If there's nothing for me to do then I get bored, I hate it,” she said. “I'm a very active person.”

Come 2012, she will be the woman to beat; she can no longer count on surprising her opponents but she appears unfazed. “Pressure doesn't matter to me,” Simmonds added. “I'll go in with my swimming head on, so the pressure won't affect me.”

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