Kelly Sotherton does not sound much like a wimp. She overcame torn thigh muscles and failing kidneys to make it to the Olympic Games in Beijing in the summer but has ended the year beating herself up while the rest of the country indulged in some gold-medal backslapping. A front-row seat at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year knees-up last weekend brought matters home to the heptathlete, which is why she has revealed that she will be carrying on until 2012.

Sotherton remains Great Britain’s most forthright athlete and her end-of-term report is always worth a read. Hence, she says “good riddance” to Lyudmila Blonska, the banned Ukrainian, believes that Charles van Commenee will work because Dutch people are “very direct” and thinks that Carolina Klüft will return to the heptathlon at the World Championships in Berlin in August.

Van Commenee, the new head coach at UK Athletics, famously called Sotherton a wimp and a weasel when she allowed a silver medal to slip through her fingers at the Athens Olympics in 2004. Four years on and a plethora of injury and health issues conspired against her, although she ended up a respectable fourth after Blonska was disqualified. Now she says that she is having her best winter for years.

“The Dutch are very matter-of-fact and tell you the truth,” she said. “Charles is honest because he wants you to improve. Some people get upset when they hear the truth. They are deluded. But he’ll bring a different dimension to what Dave Collins did. It’s a very good move and I just wish he’d been here for the last four years.”

Given that she missed 16 weeks of training in the previous year and still recorded three personal bests in Beijing, could she consider 2008 a failure? “Oh my God, yeah,” she said. “I underachieved in everything. The only event I did OK in at the Olympics was the javelin. It was not as far as I wanted to throw, but it was still a massive breakthrough. At the weekend I went to the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show and was sat between Tim Henman and Kelly Holmes. All the gold medallists got up and I knew I should have been up there. That hurt. I felt envious and jealous.”

Sotherton, 32, had suggested that she would retire from the heptathlon after the World Championships, but has moved the goalposts. “I knew Beijing was my opportunity, but people say it was my last one and I don’t believe that,” she said. “If I’m smart I can still be a contender in London, maybe not for gold but certainly for a medal. I know that in Beijing I could not give it everything I could have. I missed 16 weeks. Half that time off and I’d have challenged for gold.”

The opposition will have changed by the World Championships. Jessica Ennis, her Britain team-mate, should be recovered from a broken ankle and Klüft, whose heptathlon hegemony was ended only when she opted to concentrate on the long jump and triple jump, could be back, too. “I hear she’s doing the pentathlon at the European Indoors, which is interesting because I am, too,” she said. “I think she’ll be in Berlin, but I honestly think she might struggle now because she’s been injured a lot over the years.

“It will be hard for Jess next year, too, because it was a horrific injury and it might take her longer than people expect.”

Blonska, too, will be absent. Sotherton has crossed swords with her before because of the previous two-year ban she served from 2002 for doping. A second failed test means that there is no coming back. “Good riddance,” Sotherton said. “Now we don’t have to keep talking about her. I was suspicious. I’d like to think everyone else is clean, but you never know.”

She cites Tatyana Chernova, the bronze medal-winner from Russia, as the biggest threat in Berlin but is optimistic about a new era and damning about the Britain athletics team’s critics. “We could have come back from Beijing with ten medals,” Sotherton said. “We didn’t, but people have to realise we’re different to other Olympic sports — we’re competing against 205 countries and 49 of those won medals.

“We have a lot of talent. Now it’s about encouraging coaches because we don’t have enough professional ones. Hopefully, that will change over the next year or so.” By which time Sotherton hopes to have a gold medal and a place on the BBC stage as the World Championships end with a bang rather than a whimper.

- Kelly Sotherton competes at the Aviva International at Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, on January 31 and the Aviva Grand Prix at the NIA, Birmingham, on February 21. Tickets for both events are available by phone on 0800 0556056 or online at ukathletics.net