By Tom Fordyce

BRIMFUL OF ASHIA Full name: Ashia Nana Hansen Age: 32 Event: triple jump Honours: European gold (2002), Commonwealth gold (2002), World Indoor gold (2003, 1999), World Indoor silver (1997) Coach: Aston Moore

Even with a full six months to go until the Olympic triple jump final, Ashia Hansen's nerves are already clanging like the bells on a fire engine.

Strange, you might think. This is an athlete who has won gold in the last three major international competitions she has taken part in - last winter's World Indoors, the 2002 European Championships and the Commonwealth Games the same year.

She is fit and healthy for the first time in years, has a settled personal life after enormous turmoil in the past, and is approaching what should be her technical peak.

So why the jumping jitters?

Simple. Despite all her honours, she does not have an Olympic medal. And time is running out.

"I would swap all my medals for an Olympic one," she says.

"It's what you train for. Definitely. Everyone on the team feels the same way. Even up-and-coming athletes, those who won't make the squad this time - they are training for the Olympics.

"It's more than likely that this will be my last Olympics I'm 32 now. I could actually carry on until Beijing, but I wouldn't actually like to see myself there. I'll be so old by then.

"But I still don't feel as if I have been able to prove myself, compared to what I am capable of doing. In Athens I'm hoping, touch wood, that I'll be able to do that."

Hansen's biggest problem, historically, has been getting to the big competitions in jumping shape. Hers is an event so demanding on the body that UK Athletics's Max Jones has dubbed it the "cripple jump".

Already she has decided against defending her World Indoor title next month in Budapest, preferring spend those two weeks on long-term preparations for Athens rather than short-term glory.

"As long as I stay injury-free and healthy, I do have a good chance at the Olympics," she says. "I haven't been truly fit since 2002. And even then I had missed a whole chunk of winter training."

Last year was not a vintage one for women's triple jumping. The best jump all year was a mere 14.20m, as compared to Inessa Kravets' world record of 15.50m.

But at the Olympics, believes Hansen, the gold medal-winning leap will have to be close to the longest in history.

"There are probably five people who can jump over 15 metres this year if everyone stays fit. But that should just make the competition more exciting.

Hansen celebrates her World Indoors win in Birmingham last winter

"There's Francoise Mbango, Magdelin Martinez, Yamile Aldama, Tatyana Lebedeva and then me. With five of us capable of jumping over 15m, of course you're going to see a world record. We're all pushing each other."

Does Hansen believe she has some sort of hold over that quartet, considering her recent track record?

"No. I don't believe my competitors would think like that. Even if I went and won the World Indoors, they would still be thinking that I might be injured before the Olympics, or be sick on the actual day of reckoning. You just don't know what's going to happen.

"I didn't even realise I had won my last three major championships. You do well, then you move on to the next competition. You don't really think about the past. You're constantly thinking about the future."

You cannot necessarily blame Hansen for not wanting to look back. If her athletics career has been dogged by injury, her life away from the track has been even more difficult.

Three years ago her ex-boyfriend, Chris Cotter, was jailed for two years after staging a bogus race-hate attack on himself.

Cotter was said in court to have fabricated an attack outside Hansen's home in order to rekindle his romance with her and sell his account of it to the tabloids to help pay off debts of �25,000.

Now, thanks to her coach Aston Moore and UK Athletics sports psychologist Mark Bellamy, Hansen says she able to focus fully on her athletics.

"Aston is the person I can talk to about anything - if I'm stressed, or happy, or whatever, he's the person I go to talk to," she says. "He's more than just a coach.

"I've also had a lot of help from my sports psychologist, Mark Bellamy at UKA. I'm able to go training and then if there are any problems at home, put them to one side and concentrate on the training."