When Rhona Martin returned to these shores - well, all right, to Scotland - trailing clouds of glory after she had led her GB team to the curling gold at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, there were sundry optimistic assertions that – following a final that had caught the imagination of a nation and attracted higher TV viewing figures than Wimbledon – Britain was about to become a nation of curlers.

And lo; it did not come to pass.

Almost a decade on from that heady day on the Ogden Ice Sheet the anticipated boom in the sport has yielded just one dedicated rink in England – situated, bizarrely enough, at Tunbridge Wells in Kent. The achievement of earning Britain's first Winter Olympic gold since Torvill and Dean triumphed in the ice dance at the 1984 Sarajevo Games was historic. And historic it remains.

As London 2012 starts to loom large on most people's horizons, there will soon be the possibility that other relatively obscure sports will gain their place in the Olympic limelight, shine gloriously, and that's probably all.

One Olympian who may well rise dramatically into the British public's awareness next summer is Kat Driscoll. Did you know she is currently world number one in her sport? No? Well she is. And the sport? Trampolining, of course.

Driscoll managed to qualify for London 2012 at the end of a draining and dramatic session in the National Indoor Arena where her qualifying routine on the first day of the World Trampoline Championships proved enough – just – to get her through to Sunday's final eight, and hence an automatic place at next year's Olympics.

Driscoll looked in good shape as she scored 98.290 points to go second overall. But there was just the small matter of staying ahead of the 66 other trampolinists waiting to follow her into action. An afternoon and evening of hardcore waiting lay ahead.

With three remaining, Driscoll stood seventh out of eight, having seen her British colleague Laura Gallagher slip out of the reckoning for what would have been a second automatic home place at London 2012.

Thankfully for the 25-year-old Geordie-ised native of Chatham, Kent, however, none of the remaining competitors could better her and so she will now be able to look forward to making a name for herself next summer – and to reflect upon the merit of a crucial decision she took last year to leave her full-time job at a bank in order to concentrate 100 per cent on reaching the treasured realm of a home Olympics.

As reported by BBC Sport's Ollie Williams, Driscoll reacted to her success, after nearly eight hours of agonising waiting, by collapsing in tears of joy in the arms of her husband, the former GB trampolinist Gary Short, who coaches at the Washington Leisure Centre where she trains in Tyne and Wear.

Speaking earlier this month, as she looked forward to the World Championships on home soil which she hoped would prefigure for her an Olympics on home soil, Driscoll recalled how her career had reached a decisive point in 2010.

"I gave up work in February last year," she said. "I was working full-time for HSBC in Durham city centre and to get from there to training meant I was losing about an hour and a half a day just by travelling. It became even worse in the winter, particularly how bad the winter was last year.

"I felt I was missing far too much and I wasn't able to access the strength and conditioning that I do now. That was the crucial point where I realised that if I was going to give everything up and go for the Olympics, it had to be then."

Her decision has been amply justified this year as a gold, silver and bronze medals in World Cup events have established her at the top of the world list. Thankfully she was able to turn that form into another crucial result in Birmingham in the face of strong Chinese and Russian opposition.

Driscoll's routine in the NIA was carefully orchestrated to conform with the new element recently introduced to competitive trampolining – which became part of the Olympic gymnastics programme at the 2000 Sydney Games.

This new consideration is named "time of flight", which means Driscoll and every other serious competitor on the planet has had to strive to rise even further into the air to complete their ever more intricate routines.

Even Driscoll admits it can be a little daunting. "The higher you are, the more time you have to complete your routines. But I don't like to think about how high I go," she said. "It gets scary when you look at it like that."

When I asked her what she was supposed to do if she felt herself getting out of control at high altitude, she responded brightly: "You just have to tuck and make yourself into a ball so you don't have any arms or legs sticking out." All relatively simple, then.

There was no fall to earth for Driscoll at Birmingham, however, and the world number one proceeds with relief and gathering ambition to the World Championship final. It's all on for London too. And whether we become a nation of trampolinists or not, it will be fascinating to watch her go for glory on home soil – or should I say, in home air.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.