It would be understandable if Nicola Sanders was a bit miffed at how her profile has plateaued. Take the time a small girl asked her if she was Kelly Sotherton and, when told that she was not, replied: “Are you sure?”

Then there is the contrast with Christine Ohuruogu, who is close to becoming a household name for reasons good and bad. “The way people talk about it, she beat me by miles,” Sanders said in reference to the narrowest of defeats to her Team GB sparring partner in the World Championship final last year. “It was four-hundredths. It was a blanket finish.”

That is the only hint of dissatisfaction in the Sanders make-up, even though her form going into Beijing will act as a mug of Horlicks and bedtime story for Sanya Richards, the United States's queen of the quarter-milers. Sanders's best this season is 50.88sec, which is not enough to make the top 20 in the IAAF lists, while her 51.27 at Crystal Palace last week saw could have seen her make the transition from tardy to mardy.

The good news is the European indoor champion looked equally out of sorts before those World Championships in Osaka. Her best time that summer had been 50.97 but she took 1.3sec off that to finish second to Ohuruogu in Japan. Knee and thigh injuries have not helped an athlete whose back and hamstring problems convinced her to leave the hurdles for the flat in the first place, but she remains upbeat. “My aim last year was to get in the final and run 49 something - I did that,” she said. “My winter training went better than it did last year and my fitness is a lot stronger. This year the aim is to get a bronze medal.”

Richards will start as favourite. She missed the 400m at the World Championships because she was feeling ill on the day of the US trials and did not qualify, and has since let everyone know that she sees the Olympics as an opportunity for revenge.

Michael Johnson, still the 200m and 400m world record holder, said he felt the British would be undercooked and like “deer in headlights” when they reached Beijing, claiming they had not raced often enough and against top quality rivals to be ready. “I race better off rest,” Sanders countered. “It's the speed I have in my legs, not what's down on paper, that matters. I always have to be careful about the speed work I do in training because that is what flares up my quads.”

The lack of races may worry Johnson, but the British duo are used to it. Last year Sanders had only five races prior to going to Osaka, including two at the trials. Ohuruogu, by necessity of her ban, had just one, a pedestrian 53.09 seconds in the Scottish Championships. At that point she was not on Johnson's radar, but it all came good. This year things look tougher, albeit that the absence of Allyson Felix, the American 200 metres world champion, because of myopic scheduling is a major boost, but the British are quietly gearing up for a transatlantic bunfight. “Even before Osaka I didn't think about winning, but coming away with a silver medal, just four hundredths behind, well obviously you've got to feel pretty confident about the Olympics,” Sanders said.

The 26-year-old from Amersham, Buckinghamshire has already come a long way. Four years ago she was in a different event and running at inter-counties meetings. “I hadn't had my first international at the time and running at the Olympics wasn't realistic. I was not even in the equation but things evolve.”

One thing that has not evolved is her physique but she is not intimidated by the taller, more muscular women beside her. “I wouldn't want to put on a lot of muscle because I haven't the frame to carry it around,” she said. “You have to work with what you have got and I don't think it's done me too much harm.”

Tony Lester, her coach, calls her “boring”, in the nice sense that she does everything right, and little girls still mix her up with Sotherton, the heptathlete, and Laura Turner, the sprinter and Sanders's friend. It will take in the region of 49.5sec in China to solve the confusion once and for all.