Christine Ohuruogu came seemingly from nowhere to win the 400m at the World Athletics Championships last year and immediately found her Olympic hopes shrouded in controversy.
She was suspended from competing in the 2006 European Athletics Championships because she missed three out of competition drugs tests, one in October 2005 and two in June 2006.
According to IAAF and British Olympic Association rules, she received a one-year ban for missing these tests. A day after her ban was completed on August 5 2007, Ohuruogu was selected for the British team at the World Championships.
With the fastest woman in the world Sanya Richards absent after failing to qualify for the US team, Ohuruogu took gold ahead of her compatriot Nicola Sanders.
The British Olympic Association banned her from competing at future Olympic Games for Great Britain as is consistent with their bye-laws, but she successfully appealed on November 27 and is free to take her place on the start line in Beijing.
The 24-year-old member of the Newham and Essex Beagles club was brought up less than a mile from Stratford, the site of the athletics events at the 2012 Olympics in London, and could well be the face of the London Games.
After reaching the semi-final at the 2005 World Championships, she won a bronze medal in the women's 4x400m relay alongside Lee McConnell, Donna Fraser and Sanders.
Ohuruogu may only have broken into the public's conciousness with her run in Osaka, but she had already proved herself capable of winning big races.
Running for England, she won a gold medal in the 400m at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in a personal best time of 50.28 seconds, beating then reigning world champion Tonique Williams-Darling from the Bahamas in both the semis and the final.
With Paula Radcliffe struggling with injury, Ohuruogu is regarded as Britain's best hope of an athletics gold. But the form book says Richards should win and the Londoner may have to settle for a place on the podium.
