It has taken Jonny Wilkinson several years, a couple of books and a foray into quantum physics to cope with life at the top. It might all have been simpler, if not less painful, had he just had a baby. Paula Radcliffe espoused the merits of childbirth for the professional athlete when she returned from maternity and injury leave to win the New York City Marathon last year. Now Shelley Rudman, who won a silver medal for Great Britain in the skeleton bob at the last Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006, is singing from the same hymn sheet.

“I am so much stronger now,” Rudman, who embarks on the comeback trail this week, said. “I am lifting far heavier weights this year than before I was pregnant. I definitely agree that childbirth is good for the athlete. It also enables you to switch off when you are away from the track. Then you go back and you are so much more at peace.”

But for several low-level competitions, Rudman has barely plunged down a mountainside on a high-tech tea tray for 21 months. Coincidentally, that was the same period of time Radcliffe spent on the sidelines before her comeback in New York. Rudman, who had to delay knee surgery until after she gave birth to Ella in October of last year, is preparing for the first World Cup race, in Winterberg, Germany, tomorrow and is relishing taking on the body-bending G-forces and 80mph slopes that stand between her and the next Olympics, in Vancouver in 2010.

“I want to win the gold medal,” she said, bluntly. “That’s going to be hard, much harder than Turin, because the Canadians are already a strong nation and they are on the Olympic track every day. By the time we get there, we will have had about 30 runs on it and they’ll have had 500. But my life feels settled now and I’m looking for more than a few World Cup podiums before ramping it up.”

Rudman’s story is already gold. A hurdler who fell into the skeleton bob by accident, when visiting friends at the University of Bath, she had to convince her parents that she was not joking when she told them what her new ambition was. They then joined her home village of Pewsey, Wiltshire, in being captured by the goal. The former village beauty queen and a retired policeman canoed to Bath to raise the £4,000 that Rudman needed to travel. The Moonrakers pub came to a standstill when she competed; it was widely agreed that it was the biggest sporting event in Pewsey since the pub landlord and vicar had faced off over plans to host pole-dancing nights. Now she says that she can make a living thanks largely to her sponsor, King of Shaves.

Maya Pedersen, the Olympic champion from Switzerland, has given her advice about life after childbirth. “She had a baby last year and she told me that it takes a while for you to click again with your sliding,” Rudman said. “My starts are actually better now, but I’m not piecing it together and the only reason is the lack of time I’ve had sliding. I still need half a year to click. It’s about the timing. You need to be able to keep your body position under high Gs. There’s lots of oscillations in the turns and I’m learning the tracks again.”

Finding track time is another conundrum. The better you get, it appears, the less willing World Cup venues are to have you practise there. Kristan Bromley, her partner, won the overall World Cup this year, the first Briton to do so since 1965, so the pair’s cards are marked. “We’re getting turned away from tracks left, right and centre,” Rudman, 27, said. “They’re closing the door because, if there’s an event coming up, they don’t want us learning the quirks of the track.” SnOasis, a £350 million indoor winter sports venue being built in Suffolk, will be a godsend.

Rudman had several tentative outings at the start of the year, but tomorrow is the first big step on the trail to Vancouver. She and Bromley could be a marketing dream, a potent combination of speed, success and Lycra. Bromley has a PhD and a risible media moniker in “Dr Ice”; Rudman gets her name called out occasionally in the streets of Pewsey and has appeared on Superstars. However, for much of the media and the public, winter sports are marginalised and remain, literally and otherwise, on ice.

Expect that to change when Britain realises that it may just have a golden couple in its midst.

Weight of numbers

3,500 Cost of sled in pounds sterling

32 Weight of sled in pounds

0 Brakes

1,200 Minimum length of course in metres

1928 First time that skeleton appeared at the Olympics on Cresta Run

5 Level of G-force exposed to, which is the equivalent to a Formula One driver in braking

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