Sally Pearson

My goals were last year to win the world champs and this year to win the Olympic Games and I've done that and I couldn't be happier.

Winning a gold medal is not easy but I believed in myself, especially over the last four years.

If you hold back in hurdles, you are going to fall over.

Hurdling, sprinting, athletics in general, is always in the back of your mind.

Being at school, being who I am, being an athlete, it was hard to find people like me. There's not many athletes that can be at my level. That was kind of hard finding people who love something so much they want to keep on doing it.

Not a lot of people know me outside of athletics and believe it or not I am actually quite shy. The exhilaration of a win or tears after falling are the extremes. It takes me a while to get to know someone, but once I do I am very loyal to my old friends.

I have a huge passion for animals and while retirement is a long way off, when I do I would love to do something with animals.

Coming over to Europe you can always put on weight really easily because you are not doing your normal routine at home. It is just a bit more discipline and not eating breads and pastas which are my favourite foods in the entire world.

It's always, 'Are you the runner girl?' I say, 'My name is Sally actually.' I used to always get that at school as well, 'Are you the runner girl?' I'm not even the runner girl, I'm a hurdler.

My job is my sport so I have to make sure that I stay focussed on it. I train almost every day so it takes up a lot of my life and you don't want to bring any new distractions into your life.

I know who my dad is, I've met him a few times, but I don't even call him dad. I know it sounds horrible, but I don't even see him as part of my family, to be honest. If you want the truth, it doesn't bother me because I don't know any different. I just know that me and my mum, that was my family.

But I'm after medals more than anything. Championships don't get taken away from you but records do, so I think I'd rather have medals at every championships rather than times. A world record would be a bonus, but I'm still only 25 in 17 days.