London 2012: Kate Walsh’s long journey to top of world hockey

Helen Richardson, 30, is the team’s tireless midfield playmaker. She has played with defender Walsh for more than a decade and shared the Athens disappointment.

“From a young age, Kate has known what she wanted from hockey, and gone off and tried to get it. She’s somewhere near at the moment,” says Richardson.

“Her leadership is invaluable. She’s empathetic, she understands people. With Kate at the helm, and the phenomenal amount of training we’ve done, we are in a really strong place.”

Walsh devours biographies of other athletes and frequently references them, searching for clues from other people’s lives. Pitfalls to avoid, tiny gains to be made.

When things got tough in the gym, England cricket’s Andrew Strauss and Michael Vaughan helped.

“There was a recent interview where Strauss said what he learnt from Vaughan was to wear a mask,” she explains.

“I he was having a bad day, you wouldn’t know in the changing room. He walked in and put this mask on, and I think that’s very important.

“I might be having the worst day of my life but I need to just crack on. It’s not good for the other players to see that. They can’t be, ‘Ooh, what’s wrong with Kate?’

“I don’t want them to be thinking about that. I want them to be thinking about their job.”

Part of this fascination with the lives of others may spring from the fact that British women’s hockey is only now on the cusp of achieving the same sporting heights already attained elsewhere.

There is little precedent for Walsh to find in hockey, so she looks elsewhere.

This shows up again when she contemplates the possibility of an Olympic title at London 2012: “I don’t know how that would feel.

“Helen and I have that conversation all the time, wondering how it might feel, and in biographies you read that when athletes actually win those medals, there is a ‘down’ period afterwards.