The 24-year-old Londoner added the Olympic 400 metres title to her world crown in Beijing last week as became the only Briton to win a gold medal on the track.

 

It revived calls from certain quarters for her to become the face of the 2012 Games as she was born and brought up less than a mile from the site of the Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

 

Ohuruogu said: “To be the poster girl for 2012 would be a huge achievement.

 

“It’s something I would definitely look forward to because I live very close to the site of the Olympics, but it’s up to other people to decide.”

 

Ohuruogu divides polarises opinion like no sportsman or woman in Britain following her year's ban for missing three out-of-competition drugs tests.

 

Speaking on the eve of her appearance in tomorrow's Aviva British Grand Prix at Gateshead, she said: “Realistically, it’s something I have to put up with whether I like it or not.

 

“It’s not something I let get to me too much because my job as an athlete is to keep on performing, and that’s what I’m going to do.

“I am not expecting people to forget, but it’s important that I keep doing what I like doing, working honestly.

"That’s what I believe in.

"It doesn’t bother me too much any more.”

Ohuruogu's coach Lloyd Cowan has urged Sebastian Coe and his London 2012 colleagues to ignore those critics who believe that she should not be allowed to compete in the Olympics.

He said: "If you can’t sell that then what is the London Games about.

“Maybe the face is not the one you want to see, but if you can’t sell the Olympic, world and Commonwealth champion, what does that say about London and what we are doing?

“What she does is not easy.

"But she has huge mental strength when it counts.

"People say bad things about you because they want to bring you down, and she has had to go through that for a whole year.

“How would you feel if you ended up in prison, you have been released and you are trying to do your honest day’s work and people keep bringing up the past?”