Tasha Danvers knows she was lucky to be in Beijing after a season that she described as easily the worst of her life, complete with a low white blood cell count that affected her ability to train and compete.

In such circumstances and with many believing that her abject effort at the Olympic trials should have consigned her to remain at home in Los Angeles, her bronze medal in the 400 metres hurdles was more of a surprise than Usain Bolt's world record.

Yet Danvers, who has lived mainly in the United States since she attended university there, took advantage of a weakened field to finish third behind Melanie Walker, of Jamaica, and Sheena Tosta, of the US. Her time of 53.84sec beat her personal best, set five years ago before she fell pregnant and pulled out of the Athens Olympics. “Don't ever give up,” she said. “That's what I want the next generation to understand. Everything doesn't come up all roses all the time. That is the nature of this athletics game.”

Danvers injured an Achilles tendon in May and then, in her first session back, tore her hamstring. At the European Cup she said her body could not respond. The same thing happened at the trials. “We looked at my white blood cell count and it was really low,” she said. “The range is 3.5 to 10 and I was 3.6, so we knew the reason why I was running so crappy.

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“I've had two more hamstring strains since then. I was watching that Colin Jackson TV show, The Making Of Me, about nature or nurture and I noticed how strong Colin was mentally no matter what happened. I just thought ‘do not give up on yourself'.”

Danvers's medal is another surprise for the athletics team after Germaine Mason's silver in the high jump. The target of five medals could be reached today as Phillips Idowu, Martyn Rooney and Goldie Sayers compete in the triple jump, 400 metres and javelin finals respectively.

Idowu is the best bet, having consistently jumped in the mid 17-metre range and put ten centimetres on the rest of the field in qualifying with one leap. However, Jonathan Edwards, the Olympic champion in 2000, said: “He's always been a good qualifier but there's a different psychological pressure on you when you're jumping for an Olympic medal.”

Rooney's personal best of 44.60sec in the 400 metres semi-finals has raised expectations on his shoulders.