THERE is a sense of serenity about Lynsey Sharp these days. Perhaps it has come with age: she turned 26 a few weeks before last summer’s Olympic Games in Rio, and says that for the first time people have started to ask her how long she plans to go on competing. Or maybe it arises from experience, and in particular an appreciation of the need to accept what you cannot change.

Sharp herself credits her coach, Terrence Mahon, with helping her become more emotionally detached when required. She also thinks his advice will play a part – along, of course, with the usual gruelling training sessions – in ensuring that she goes from strength to strength in the second half of her career.

“Some people might say Rio would have been my peak,” she says when we meet up during a short break at home in Edinburgh before she flies out to altitude training in New Mexico. “But I don’t think in any way I’m at my peak, because there was so much I learned from last year and so much more that me and Terrence can do to keep building.”

Whatever the origin of this greater maturity, it is sure to be put to the test when the athletics season begins in earnest, and culminates in the IAAF World Championships in London in August. Every event in track and field is subject to political disputes, but perhaps none more so than the women’s 800 metres, the event at which Sharp has been European champion and Commonwealth silver medallist.

For the past few years the leading competitors in the event must have felt like they were running on shifting sands rather than terra firma. First there was the controversy over Russia’s doping programme; and then, more persistently, there has been the issue of so-called hyperandrogenic athletes – those who have naturally high testosterone levels. Olympic champion Caster Semenya is the only 800m runner to have officially been identified as hyperandrogenic, but it has consistently been suggested that others are also in that category.

The status quo for a long time was to bar any female competitor whose testosterone went over a certain limit. Then it was decided they could compete, but only if they took medication to lower their testosterone. In 2015, after an appeal to the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS), the IAAF was given two years to prove precisely how big an advantage hyperandrogenic women gained, and the field was thrown open again.

Sharp has been aware of the complexity of the issue for quite some time, having competed against Semenya for nearly a decade, and having written a dissertation on it while a law student at Edinburgh Napier University. But it impacted on her most severely immediately after the Olympic final, when, in tears, she gave a live BBC interview in which she spoke of how difficult it was to run against hyperandrogenous athletes.

The reaction on social media was vitriolic, and not only in Semenya’s native South Africa. Sharp, who came sixth, was accused of racism, and, like so many women with a public profile on Twitter, subjected to extreme misogynistic abuse. She came off Twitter straight away, and has not posted on it since August. But her family and friends continued to monitor the threats, which in some cases were so severe they began to fear for her safety.

Five months on, she insists she said and did nothing wrong.

“I think a lot of people within the sport will say what they’re told to say or what people want them to say or what they think is the right thing to say,” Sharp says. “With what I did at uni, I am quite opinionated, and will say my thoughts.

“Other people are as entitled as I am to their opinion, but what’s frustrating is one, that people haven’t taken the time to read the full story before making a comment, and secondly, that in the world we live in now, one person will jump on something, and everyone else, without even watching the interview or reading anything, will jump on that as well.

“That’s part of the reason why I came off Twitter. It’s not like the real world – people will say things they would never say to my face in the street. It wasn’t helping my performance in any way, it wasn’t adding anything to my life, and I’ve had plenty of discussions with people since August, since I haven’t been on Twitter, about the topic – face-to-face discussions with people that don’t agree with my opinion on it, and that’s fine. We can have a good discussion on it. But Twitter is 140 characters – it’s not a quality discussion in any way.

“When people criticised me for what I said, I don’t think people realise how long it has been an issue and how long I’ve been aware of it. I raced against Caster in 2008, so I’ve been very aware of the issue.

“Also, maybe people don’t appreciate how it felt to be asked about it every week. If people knew everything about the situation, and knew what it was like to be stood in front of a BBC camera as soon as you walked off the track, and to be asked that – I had no choice but to answer the question.

“And I’d already said that I didn’t want to speak about it, so it was very hard. And I felt like I was very careful with what I said, but at the same time I had to portray how I felt. I’m not someone that’s just going to say what everyone else wants to hear. I’ll say what I think.

“I tried my best all year to only focus on what I was doing in the event, and I felt like I did that very well. But it came to a head.

“What people saw in Rio was a very small part of the whole picture. It’s very easy to judge that one situation as opposed to the last however many years.”

The three medallists in Rio were black; the next three athletes were white. The notion that there was a racial dimension to the issue was exacerbated by a widely circulated photograph which showed Sharp embracing fourth-placed Melissa Bishop of Canada, while appearing to ignore Semenya as the new champion reached out a hand to her. When comments such as “Dry your white tears” started being addressed to her on Twitter, Sharp realised that a sporting event was beginning to be engulfed by racial politics – something she still finds as absurd as it is upsetting.

“I never once even mentioned an individual in the interview,” she says. “I didn’t mention a name. So the fact people took it as a black-versus-white thing . . . I had to go back and watch the interview, and send it to people and ask ‘Did I say something that I didn’t realise I said?’. People were saying ‘white tears’.

“I became really good friends with Melissa at the Commonwealths in Glasgow. We get on really well. In the picture I’m giving her a hug, and I’m looking at the screen to find out my time.

“It was completely taken out of context. The fact people said it was racist was unbelievable. That didn’t even enter my head. It’s just bizarre.”

The timing of the CAS ruling means another change is possible this year, again changing the ground rules for an event which should be athletics at its purest: two laps of the track as fast as you can go. And that has the potential to disrupt the preparation of everyone in the elite field, from Semenya and others who do not know if they will be allowed to compete without performance-enfeebling treatment, to Sharp and the rest who are not sure who the opposition will be come August or what times they will need to run to get the better of them.

It has the potential to disrupt their earning power too. Sharp ran faster last year than in 2015, but, with the treatment ruling lifted, won less prize money. Semenya’s times, meanwhile, suffered when she was undergoing treatment, impacting on her income too.

If there was a time when every change in the ground rules produced emotional upheaval, Sharp has now become convinced that equanimity is a far better approach to take for the sake of her career. She knows her event could be stood on its head again, but has decided that, if that is what happens, so be it.

“I don’t know what’s right, I don’t know what’s wrong, and it’s not my decision to work that out,” she says. “I can’t see how it’s ever going to be resolved - it’s always going to be a massive talking point.

“The encouraging thing is I’m not far away from competing with those girls. If I can push on again from where I was last year, I’ll definitely be competitive.

“I’m never going to be able to change the fact that there’s politics in the sport. I do it because I love the sport, I love competing, and I like being able to do that as a profession.

“I’m not strongly against them competing in my event, I’m just saying there is a situation. And it somehow turned into me versus them, and that’s not what it was at all.

“I would speak to them in person and they don’t have a problem with me. I spoke to Caster at the end of the season and said ‘Look, I don’t have a problem with you’, and she replied and said she doesn’t have a problem with me either. I’ve known her for a number of years. I think people thought it was way more than what it was.”

Whatever rule changes do or do not take place, Sharp plans to stick around for a while yet – even if she has started to be asked when she plans to retire. She is still getting faster, and, perhaps crucially, is also becoming stronger thanks to training at altitude in places such as Albuquerque.

“This is probably the first point when people have been, like, ‘Oh, I hope you don’t mind me asking, how many more years are you going to do this?’ Because I’ve been around for a while some people think I’m older than I am, and are surprised that I’m only 26.

“Each year that I get through a winter without getting injured, I can build on that the next year. The difference between now and this time last year is absolutely massive. I ran a personal best last year, and I’m looking back thinking ‘I really wasn’t in great shape last year’. I’m in such a better place now, and if I keep building on that each year . . .

“I still feel like I don’t know the event fully. I don’t think anyone does. But each race I do, and each season, I feel like I know it better.

“I think about how much I learned between London and Rio. If I can do that again between Rio and Tokyo, I think I’ve got a lot to give in the next four years.”