WHEN Rebecca Romero won a silver medal in the women’s quadruple scull at the Athens Olympics in 2004, it seemed certain that the then 24-year-old would be going for gold in Beijing four years later. She still is, but the shock is that it will not be in rowing.

Last week, three months after what was meant to be a fun day at the Manchester Velodrome, Romero confirmed that she is switching to track cycling.

The British Cycling Federation, which has placed Romero on full funding and assigned Dan Hunt as her personal coach, has targeted the 3,000-metre pursuit as her likely event. Is it, though, too fanciful to suggest that she will be ready to race in Beijing? “I don’t think I would be being supported in this way if that wasn’t a possibility,” Romero said. “Nothing is certain, but the early indicators suggest that I can achieve at a high level.”

For an athlete of such striking single-mindedness, nothing less would do, but Romero wants to make it clear that this unprecedented change was not an either-or choice.

“In a rowing sense, I had difficulties motivating myself after Athens,” she said. “But I didn’t want to make a rash decision, so I tried to make changes to see if my feelings would change. I thought they had when I became world champion in 2005, but then I had a back injury and through that experience I did a lot of question answering.”

The key was that during her rehabilitation from the disc injury, Romero realised that she was not missing rowing. “I suddenly knew that I didn’t want to go back to it, that I had kind of outgrown it,” she said. “I also thought that I was writing off going to the Beijing Olympics.”

Then came the fast-tracking. “A friend of mine invited me to Manchester and because rowers do a lot of cycling in their training, I thought it would be fun,” Romero said. “It was low key, with no pressure, and I certainly wasn’t looking beyond that day. Someone from British Cycling, though, took it on from that point.”

Romero was happy to be flattered, but she dislikes self-deceit. “If you’ve got a head on your shoulders, you don’t jump from one sport to another on the basis of a few positive vibes,” she said. “So I took the necessary time to think about everything — whether I even wanted to stay in sport — or if I wanted a completely different lifestyle, because once you go for something like this you have to give 100 per cent or there’s no point.”

When Romero decided to commit, her new team-mates were coming back from competing in the Commonwealth Games and they are away again this week, in France, where the World Championships begin today.

“It means I only met them for the first time last week,” Romero said. “But all the athletes have been really welcoming and supportive. One of the most thrilling things about all of this is the chance to work with different people in a different set-up. It’s a whole life change, which is incredibly exciting.”

No date has been set for Romero’s debut competitive race and she is spending the next few months bedding in good habits and honing technique. The river is on her doorstep in Marlow, but she does not expect to have to move closer to the track in Manchester. “We’re in the process of working out how we’re going to implement everything,” Romero said. “But it won’t be necessary for me to leave Buckinghamshire.”

She has, though, already left behind most of her sporting past although her former rowing colleagues hold her respect and friendship. “I will always support them,” she said. “We wanted to move British women’s rowing to a new level in world competition and I want them to carry on doing that.

“I could be a rower that tries to have a long career winning gold medal after gold medal, but I’ve chosen to be challenged in a different way. It’s fate and luck that I’ve been given this opportunity and I’m really grateful.”

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