Christine Ohuruogu sent a thinly veiled message of intent to Sanya Richards yesterday as the battle between the Olympic champion and the nearly golden girl from the United States moved back on to the agenda. “I just do what I need to do,” the British runner said. “I don't let anything else get in the way.”

The rivalry has been simmering since before last summer's Games, when Richards suggested that Ohuruogu was fortunate to be in Beijing after overturning her Olympic ban. Richards's profile on the MySpace social networking website is full of anti-Ohuruogu messages from fans. The American media also claimed that the Briton was lucky.

Richards said she was “betrayed by her body” in explaining her implosion when leading until the final straight in the Olympic 400 metres final and says she is fitter now because it is a year since any episodes related to her fight with Behçet's Syndrome, a disease affecting the body's immune system. She has embraced the post-Beijing celebrity circuit, appearing on talk shows with Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno, and hiring the Manhattan nightclub co-owned by Jay-Z, the hip-hop artist, for a New Year's Eve party. Ohuruogu, by contrast, has kept a low profile and trained on New Year's Day.

“It's either Sanya or someone else,” Ohuruogu said when asked about the rivalry. Had Richards been more respectful since Beijing? “I've not seen her so we've not had the opportunity to exchange words,” she replied. Is she tempted to follow Richards's lead and compete on the lucrative European circuit before the World Championships in Berlin in August? “What are you suggesting?” she said. “That I give all this up? You can do that [Golden League circuit] but you run the risk of getting to the World Championships burnt out. I train for the major championships. I'm not saying I don't care about the rest but it's not my focus. The World Championships are more important to me than money.”

The 24-year-old is not worried that Richards ran five of the ten best times in the world last year. Ohuruogu was the fastest but her next best times were the nineteenth and seventieth fastest. “If I'd been worried about PBs in Beijing I might not have run what I needed to,” Ohuruogu said. “At the end of the day you do whatever you need to win.”

Ohuruogu is spending three weeks at the UK Athletics warm-weather training camp in South Africa. She is likely to compete sparingly before the rematch with Richards in Berlin. Raised by the site of the Olympic stadium in Stratford, East London, Ohuruogu received royal approval in being appointed MBE in the New Year's Honours List and she hinted that she may become the face of 2012. “I talk to Tessa [Jowell, the Minister for the Olympics] regularly and Seb Coe [the chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games],” she said. “There are ideas in the pipeline.”