THE real Kelly Holmes, the one who trains hard and races tough, has started to elbow aside the one latterly associated with glamorous outfits and gala awards nights. Six weeks after questioning whether she would ever again have the hunger for success that she possessed before her Olympic double, it was announced yesterday that Holmes will return to racing next month.

Not only did Holmes say through Fast Track, the sport’s promoter in Britain, that “I am still competitive, I still want to win”, but Andy Graffin, a regular training partner, confirmed that she was “putting in all the sessions”.

Holmes returns today from work with a sponsor in the United States to spend Christmas at home in Kent before leaving for a month’s training in South Africa. She has signed to race at least twice indoors in Britain this winter and, though it remains unclear whether she will contest the European Indoor Championships in Madrid in March, that now looks likely.

“It has been such a hectic time since Athens,” Holmes said. “It has been great fun but I am an athlete and running is what I do. I cannot wait to get back on to the track.”

The first track race in Britain for Holmes since she won the 800 metres and 1,500 metres in Athens will be at a venue that contrasts markedly with the Olympic Stadium. The cramped 4,000-seat Kelvin Hall, in Glasgow, will house Holmes’s opening competition of 2005, in the Norwich Union International on January 29. A five-nations match, it will mark her first run in a Britain vest since the Olympics.

As Russia are one of the four visiting nations — Sweden, France and Italy being the others — the opposition could include Tatyana Tomashova, runner-up to Holmes in the 1,500 metres in Athens. It is at this distance that Holmes will compete in Glasgow in a two-race deal with Fast Track that includes the 1,000 metres in the Norwich Union Grand Prix, in Birmingham on February 18.

At the end of a year in which she was crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Holmes’s commercial value has rocketed and she is likely to be receiving close to £100,000 for the two-event deal. She may also compete in the European trials in Sheffield on February 12 and 13.

While in South Africa last month, giving a training camp for a group of promising British teenagers, Holmes raised doubts about her future commitment. Aged 34, she said: “I do not think I will ever have the same focus. I will never have the same hunger.”

Time, though, seems to be sharpening Holmes’s appetite. “She has decided she wants to do these races and will be training her legs off to get ready for them,” Graffin said. He added that she had begun to schedule outside interests around her training and that she was sometimes running twice in a day.