THE years have been kind to David Hemery.

When the former Olympic 400 metres hurdles champion was helping Lee McConnell in the Scot's attempt to transition from the flat 400m to the barriers, Hemery kept pace with her on the flat as he ran alongside. I joked then that he looked almost as if he could go out and do it all over again.

At altitude in Mexico City, Hemery smashed the world record to win the 1968 Olympic title by the biggest winning margin in 44 years. The quite-remarkable BBC commentator, David Coleman, was so mesmerised that - in what has been described as "an orgasm of excitement" - he had no eyes for the rest: "Who cares who's third? It doesn't matter!" In fact it was another Brit, John Sherwood. Sebastian Coe, then aged 12, was watching in Sherwood's home town, and this moment in Sheffield ignited Coe's Olympic dreams.

Hemery now lives near Avebury, and still runs. We spoke this week on his return from what now passes for training. "I've just come back from a hill session on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, and realise the legs are quite weak now," he tells me. "I did eight reps up a hill, 100 metres worth. I like to jog. The dogs need exercise. So I walk and jog a bit, then run a bit harder, then walk a bit. With V [his wife Vivien] driving her carriage - a couple of Connemara ponies on the front - there is a step and seats on the back. So I run until I'm out of breath, jump on, get my breath back, then run ahead and open the gate for her. It's a very good way of doing a fartlek session and covering the countryside."

In the steamy heat of Jamaica nearly 48 years ago, Hemery swept to his debut international title. He won the 120 yards at the final edition of the Empire Games, in Kingston, and by the time the event had been rebranded in Edinburgh as the Commonwealth Games, the distance had gone metric. It was over 110m hurdles that Hemery won in 1970 - the first man to defend successfully.

Based in the US, where he'd spent almost half his life prior to Mexico due to his father's job, Hemery was unheralded as a potential champion in 1968. Until his penultimate year at school, the closest he'd come to hurdles was running over the beach and breakwaters as he grew up on England's east coast - by the time he won in Mexico, he was the most flawless one-lap exponent in the world.

BBC commentary on the race helped launch the Colemanballs column in Private Eye. Yet without Coleman's voice, when Hemery later saw the race minus sound, he said the race was "flat".

Britain's only gold in Mexico launched him to stardom. He was BBC Sports Personality of the Year and twice won Superstars.

His memory of Jamaica was: "lying on the beach, listening to England's World Cup. I was very unwell the night before my final. I didn't want to wake the doc and I remember walking round the village. I don't know what my temperature was by the time I ran, but I was burning hot. I realised I wouldn't have to warm up for the final. I was already sweating, so I jogged a little and loosened up over the first hurdle. I felt very weak. I ran 14.1, not a great time since I'd run 13.9, but it was my first Games, and I'd won.

"Often I've talked about Edinburgh as the Friendly Games, with everyone speaking the same language. It was lovely. I won by a big margin. Alan Pascoe was the most challenging opponent, but started hitting hurdles and ducked out at the eighth, I think."

Hemery won in 13.66 with a 2.9-metre wind at his back. "It was the fastest I'd ever moved my legs outside a hand-timed 13.4. The wind did not help at all. The speed of cadence you need when you are a long strider is difficult. Over 400m hurdles I was striding 8ft 6in. Here I was striding 6ft 8ins and the wind was blowing you closer to the hurdles."

His switch to 400m hurdles began after Kingston. "My coach suggested I try them when I got back. He pointed out I'd run a European record over 600 yards [69.8sec], been in a photo finish for the indoor 45 yards hurdles and had just won the Commonwealth Games: 'So you can hurdle,' he said. 'How about merging the two and going for the top of the podium at 400 hurdles in 1968."

But the following year I tore a hamstring during the indoors and didn't do anything. I was supposed to be learning how to hurdle off the other leg. I had to rehab doing a lot of work with weighted boots before the 1968 Olympics."

He took up the decathlon (best 6893 - a family record which his son, Adrian, surpassed) but couldn't make the team for the European championships. "So I went back to the high hurdles in '69."

John Aki-Bua, who relieved Hemery of his Olympic title and world record in 1972, was in Edinburgh in 1970, but Hemery barely recalls him. He was eliminated in the semis of the sprint hurdles but took silver behind Sherwood in the one-lap event which Hemery did not contest.

"I was not thinking about the 400m hurdles by then. I was hoping to focus on the decathlon, and took 1971 off, hoping to find the motivation to go on."

How hard was that? "I have a lovely phrase: my family has a large streak of oughtism - as in, 'I ought to go on,' or 'I ought to do this.' So I thought I ought to go on because I'd handed out prizes to paraplegics. A friend from that era, Lillian Board (Olympic 400m silver in Mexico) had died aged 22, of cancer. A lovely girl. Such a tragedy, and here I was, wondering. So I ought to - I have to while I have my health and strength. So it was more an 'ought' than a need or desire.

"Without that loss in '72, I would not have the learning that by rehearsing negatively, I might need to come to terms with losing. I rehearsed that over and over again, then ran that race going out too hard, and not relaxing. So preparation for racing John Aki-Bua was not the best.

"Having said that, I'm sure if I'd been close to him, he might have run even faster. He was in terrific shape, and courtesy of my being open enough to share all my training - which Malcolm Arnold [Aki-Bua's coach] thanked me for after the race! He said he had built their programme around that."

Hemery finished third in Munich, and picked up silver in the 4 x 400m.

His curiosity over the mechanics of his event drew him into coaching and he spent seven years with Boston University. He also taught at Millfield and was a made a CBE. He was the first president of UK Athletics, is vice-chairman of the British Olympic Association and, at 69, works full time for 21st Century Legacy, the charity which he founded. It aims to work up a legacy that extends beyond 2012 and London infrastructure.

So far the High School of Glasgow is the only Scottish manifestation. The organisation is short of delivery staff, "but we would like to launch it fully there," he said.

Hemery has written several books, the most intriguing for me as a sports writer having been "Sporting Excellence" a study and analysis with interveiws of more than 60 of sport's global highest achievers.

"I left every single one of them wondering how I was going to do them justice, from Kip Keino whom the Scots beat in Edinburgh through to Al Oerter, who won four successive Olympic discus golds."

Hemery elicited from Oerter a confession that before steroids became illegal, he had tried them. "He said they made him aggressive, and he did not like the person he became. And it did not make any difference to the distance he threw. 'It did nothing other than make me a person I did not want to be.'"