'There is a defiance in Scottish nature'

In the months afterwards, Grainger says, "every little comment, even supportive ones, felt like a jab of pain", as she struggled with "an overwhelming sense of despair" and "horrific sense of letting people down".

But Grainger, 37, is like the human equivalent of the Weeble that wobbles but won't fall down. Being the plucky also-ran simply wasn't going to cut it (not that three Olympic silvers and six world championship titles are a failure in anyone's book). She duly set out to rewrite her own fairytale ending.

It's not spoiling the ending of her newly published autobiography Dreams Do Come True (although the title is perhaps a giveaway) to say she has succeeded on that count. Many of us were there last summer: crowded around televisions in living rooms, offices and pubs up and down the country; roaring our support as that seven minutes of electrifying action unfolded on the water.

It remains the stuff of goosebumps: the deafening cheers as she and her team-mate Anna Watkins pulled into the lead; unflinching determination etched on both faces; the glorious elation as their boat crossed the line first; that tearful embrace between Grainger and Sir Steve Redgrave afterwards; the still shell-shocked look of disbelief as the gold medal was finally hung around her neck.

But who is the woman who turned crashing heartache into sublime joy? Here we tell the story of the inimitable Katherine Grainger in six snapshot moments.

one year ago: Olympic rowing venue, Eton Dorney, near lONDON

"Each day I live, I want to be, a day to give, the best of me," sang the voice of Whitney Houston as the radio alarm clock sprang into life and Katherine Grainger and Anna Watkins, lying in their beds, prepared to begin the biggest day of their sporting careers. They had agreed weeks earlier that One Moment in Time would be the song that would wake them on the morning of the Olympic final.

As they left the room Grainger asked Watkins if they had forgotten anything. She replied: "We've got a you, we've got a me, we've got everything we need."

With the click of the hotel room shutting behind them, their quest began. "The day itself you know you have a job to do," says Grainger. "You know it's the biggest of your life and career, that the expectation is there and you have to deliver."

She quotes tennis legend Billie Jean King as once saying: "Pressure is privilege", a notion Grainger had often reflected on in the months leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games and as she and Watkins prepared to face their own destiny.

"It was hugely nerve-wracking," she says. "Every single person we met - from the people serving breakfast to the boat drivers who took us to the course, the security staff, the Games Makers, team coaches and other athletes - knew exactly what that day meant to both of us. It was this enormous moment, but yet you take it all in your stride."

Given how focused she appeared on the task at hand, how aware were she and Watkins of the tens of thousands lining the course that day? "There were 30,000 people, deafening screams, you kind of notice them - in a very good way," she smiles. "Anna sits directly behind, so close she can touch me, she was shouting at the top of her voice and I still couldn't hear her.

"People talk about the 'Dorney Roar', the sound is amplified by the water and you are in a cauldron. The noise on both sides drops into the centre where you are racing and gets churned up. It is a physical sensation: out on the water you could feel everything. It was immense.

"Hearing that roar, knowing it was your home crowd willing you on every step of the way, it felt no-one could beat us. That is the only time I've ever felt that."

HARPERCOLLINS DISTRIBUTION CENTRE, BISHOPBRIGGS, PRESENT DAY

Katherine Grainger is signing books in a warehouse on the outskirts of Glasgow. Some 550 copies to be precise. It's a slick operation with a legion of helpers swiftly whisking away the freshly inked copies to be dispatched to shops around the country.

While many would balk at tackling the towering stack of tomes placed in front of her, Grainger barely bats an eyelid. This is, after all, a woman who once rowed with such ferocity in training that she took the skin right off her hands.

We are discussing where Grainger would be if she hadn't won her gold. "I wouldn't be doing this," she says, gesturing around the room. "I wouldn't even be in this country. After London every newspaper you picked up, every radio or television station you tuned into, was celebrating the Olympics. For months everyone with medals was on show everywhere you looked. There would have been constant reminders.

"It's not that you feel jealous or anything bad towards the people who have done well but, certainly for me after Beijing, it was a constant reminder of my failure and that, time after time, gets too much. I would have gone away on holiday and left the country for a long time."

It's a hypothetical scenario and one she never had to face. But it leads us neatly to another tantalising "what if" conundrum which came some two decades earlier.

FRESHERS' WEEK, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, 1993

It's late afternoon and Grainger is casually browsing through a pile of university club leaflets as she waits for a friend so they can walk back to the halls of residence together.

She gets handed a flyer for the Boat Club. When she gets home, Grainger sticks it on a pinboard and forgets all about it. It's only by chance she spots it a few days later nestled alongside pamphlets for karate, skiing, sailing, climbing and abseiling.

Intrigued, Grainger goes along to where the Boat Club meeting is taking place and sits quietly in the back of the lecture hall. A total of 52 novice women have signed up. There are only 16 places on the team. Grainger knows instinctively she wants to be one of them. The rest, as they say, is history. But it almost so easily wasn't.

"I do wonder what life would have been like," she says. "What I love is that anyone can look back at their life and there are these splits in the road moments. I got into rowing completely by chance. I thought I would do karate but didn't particularly like the club at university. I was free on a Thursday night to try rowing.

"I still wasn't that keen or interested. If I'd had something better to do that night I probably wouldn't have bothered going along. But I happened to meet an incredible group of people and, without that, the sport itself might not have kept me interested.

"It is so much by chance and I could have had a very different life. I went to university to study law and become a lawyer. I might not have gone to any Olympic Games."

OLYMPIC GAMES, BEIJING, 2008

Grainger stands on the medal podium as the national anthem plays and the flag of the winning team is raised. But it's not as she had long hoped that of Great Britain, but rather host nation China.

Poignantly, it is a third successive Olympic silver for Grainger. The fresh-faced, innocent joys of Sydney eight years earlier has gone. Gold was the only colour she wanted.

Afterwards, she says, her mother embraced her and whispered: "Promise me you'll be in London. You'll do it. I know you will." In that moment, Grainger was far from sure. For months afterwards, it felt like experiencing grief. The pain, she says, didn't ebb or fade, but continued at the same unpleasant level. Five years on, Grainger can recall its debilitating nature, but thankfully no longer feels its vice-like grip.

"I don't have kids but you hear from people who have gone through childbirth or experienced other horrific pain, that they never truly remember how bad it was afterwards," she says. "It's a human protection thing. We are designed that way because otherwise you can't survive."

Grainger recalls the jarring moment when, a few weeks after Beijing, she was handed a typed sheet of questions on behalf of a rowing website. The first one read: "Can you ask the women's quad how it feels to have wasted four years of their lives?" It felt like being punched in the gut.

"At the time every little comment, even supportive ones, felt like a jab of pain," she says. "That one was absolutely plunging in and twisting the knife. It was so difficult to hear. It stunned me because, even when people didn't really understand why I was so distraught, everyone was supportive. I don't know if it was deliberately hurtful, but clearly said with no thought as to what pain it could cause.

"You do lose confidence and think: 'Maybe they are right? Maybe I have just wasted four years of my life?' It starts this awful, existential crisis where you are filled with self-doubt and questioning everything.

"When I was strong enough and recovered from that original pain, I could face up to that question. I would love to look that person in the eye and answer them incredibly confidently. I absolutely know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it wasn't a wasted four years - and I will never know what it's like to waste four years of my life."

THE WONDER YEARS, BEARSDEN AND LOCALE, CIRCA 1980S

We often imagine Olympians to be honed in some elite facility, so it's a bit of a shock to discover they have ordinary childhoods, not dissimilar to us mere mortals.

This is certainly the case with Grainger. The youngest daughter of teachers Liz and Peter, she grew up in Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire, a few miles north of Glasgow. The highlight of her weekends was visiting nearby Milngavie for a vanilla nougat wafer at the Colpi ice cream parlour and browsing the treasure-laden shelves of the town's bookshop.

Childhood holidays were spent in France, staying in gites, exploring chateaux and eating fromage. As a teenager Grainger made extra pocket money with a "cream and egg round", selling dairy products and potato scones round the doors. As she got older, she would join her father as he went Munro-bagging around Scotland.

Somewhere out there is a dodgy video in which Grainger and some Bearsden Academy classmates recreate Michael Jackson's Thriller video with "bonus choreography". By the time she left school she was a black belt in karate (just in case you should be contemplating selling said dodgy clip to You've Been Framed).

Asked if her Scottish roots were important in shaping who she is today, Grainger is sanguine: "I was born in Glasgow, educated and learned to row in Edinburgh and had my grandparents in Aberdeen where I was based for a long time, so I do feel like I'm from all over Scotland: a little bit of everything."

"The first 17 years of my life I was in Glasgow. I remember reading an interview with Sharleen Spiteri of Texas where she said being a Glaswegian does give you a toughness and healthy sense of humour. You have a little bit of grit, don't back down or give up easily.

"I've rowed with a lot of people from south of the Border who would talk honestly about being quite envious of how proud Scotland is of its heritage, culture and people, whereas England, a lot of the time, slightly apologises for itself. There is a defiance in Scottish nature which I think is healthy."

LIFE AFTER LONDON, PRESENT DAY

D-Day is looming for Grainger. She's been on sabbatical since the Games but must soon decide whether she will return to the British rowing camp or embark to pastures new. Grainger is all too aware that the "R" word - retirement - hangs ominously in the air, but has yet to decide which path to take.

"I thought I would have more of an idea by now, but it is a massive life-changing decision either way," she says. "It's not something I would undertake lightly and, because I have been so busy pretty much every day since the Games, haven't really had that reflection or contemplation time.

"I'm not putting massive pressure on myself to make the decision. The implications either way are going to be huge and it involves other people too. I want to speak to them and talk things through."

She has certainly packed a lot into the past 12 months, not least having recently completed her PhD in criminal law and attended copious post-Olympic celebrations which, she jokes, have seen her spend "more time on the back of buses and flatbed trucks than a southern belle beauty queen".

Does she miss rowing? "Of course," she says. "You miss the people predominantly, the characters and camaraderie that you don't really get anywhere else. Although at the time I used to struggle with how disciplined and structured life was, I do miss a bit of that structure and familiarity."

She has five godchildren and doesn't rule out motherhood herself in the future. "Growing up you always picture yourself being married with kids," she says. "But I have had such an obsessive drive in my job, I haven't really opened the door to that particularly well."

Asked about her current relationship status, Grainger shakes her head. "No, single," she says. "I'd be a nightmare right now. I'm literally never at home, not in the right place, too busy. I'm conscious of that. I would love to be in a relationship but a good and healthy one. Right now I would not be a good partner for anyone."

Earlier Grainger had recounted her amusement when she found her mother conducting an impromptu press conference at London 2012 where she told gathered reporters: "Well, I wouldn't rule out Rio ..." Now there's a thought. But whatever path Grainger chooses, one thing is certain: it won't be by half measures. The next chapter awaits.