WHEN Mike Dobriskey was part of the decontamination team helping to prepare the site for the main Olympic stadium in London, he found an old penny buried in the soil. He put it in his pocket, polished it up and, a few months later, the penny became a lucky charm for his daughter in Beijing last year.

“My mum presented it to me on the night before my first race,” Lisa Dobriskey recalls. “I had it in my bag and now it’s tucked away in a drawer ready for London 2012. It’s a direct link, isn’t it, from London to Beijing?”

There will be heartache on the way to London 2012, you can be sure. The 25-year-old has a mind of sharpened steel but a body of porcelain. She was born with an in-turning left foot. To correct it, her mother made her wear her shoes on the wrong feet.

Not once since she began running for a living has Dobriskey enjoyed a season unbroken by injury. It kept her out of last weekend’s UK trials in Birmingham but a comfortable win in Lucerne four days ago has lifted her confidence in time for the Aviva London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace, which starts on Friday. She has endured a dispiriting haul since finishing fourth in Beijing.

Christmas involved hobbling around her family house on crutches, recovering from a back injury. “It’s my birthday just before Christmas, too, and everyone tried so hard,” she says. “I was awful company and there were a few arguments. I was really down at that point.”

Dobriskey is charming and articulate, as befits a graduate in English literature, but sentences come tumbling out in a breathless torrent. Her critics might say that’s how she runs, in fluent bursts with heart flapping on her sleeve. But the country’s best 1500m runner, the natural heir to Kelly Holmes, is barely out of her apprenticeship in world-class company, despite being the reigning Commonwealth Games champion.

The months before Beijing were like a video on fast forward: one moment, she was an outside bet to reach the final, the next, two Russians and a Romanian ahead of her in the rankings had been thrown out of the Games for positive drug tests and Dobriskey was a medal prospect, the third-fastest qualifier in a wide open field. In the final, she betrayed her tactical naivety, fractionally missing the decisive break in a race that has been replayed a thousand times during the winter.

After the race, she was a bundle of conflicting emotions. Though the tears flowed for an opportunity lost, the confidence gained will be critical to her journey towards London 2012. “Self-belief has been a problem. I’ve found it hard to think of myself as a world-class athlete. I tend to obsess about other athletes. When I’m in control of just running, I feel transformed. It’s a question of swapping the running me and the thinking me.”

Dobriskey’s season is balanced on the high wire. An early-season outing in Holland was inconclusive and the trials in Birmingham came just too soon. She still needs to secure her selection for the world championships in Berlin next month.

The one firm date in her diary is December 12, when she will marry Ricky Soos, the British 800m runner. Marilyn Okoro, her multitalented British teammate, will be chief songstress. If by then she has broken through the four-minute barrier for 1500m, come close to matching Holmes’ record of 3.57.90 and confirmed her place in the elite, Dobriskey’s year will be complete.