I know the song she listened to before that final ("One Moment in Time" – Whitney Houston) and I know she supports Arsenal Football Club.

I know she lives a 10-minute walk from the Olympic Park and I know what she does in the ice bath (Angry Birds).

I know that when she was young she used to run races with an Afro comb. Hell, I even know that on July 30, 2010, she had a late lunch of egg-white cheese and mackerel omelette.

How do I know all this? In a word: Twitter.

Not only is 27-year-old Kwakye a world-class sprinter, she is a top-drawer Tweeter as well – for my money the best among the growing numbers of elite-level sportsmen and women who inhabit the Twittersphere.

Her Tweets are funny and informative and convey the accurate impression that she is very good company.

They underline how social media, used in the right way, can utterly transform the "fan" experience, bringing people's heroes to life in a way that would have been unthinkable in the days when I used to idolise football stalwarts such as Kevin Keegan and Gerry Gow.

They also threaten to make interviewers like me redundant.

While Vancouver 2010 has already given us a taste of Olympic Tweeting, it will be fascinating to observe how use of the medium develops between now and London 2012.



As Kwakye acknowledges, she would probably have spent less time Tweeting had she not been out of action injured for so much of the post-Beijing period.

Her frustrations began in earnest in February 2009.

"I remember the day and the moment I got injured," she tells me.

"I was on a hill session and from my Tweets you probably know I detest the hills.

"I was having an absolute shocker that day on the hill.

"As I was running downhill, I did a funny step, my knee made a sound and knocked a bit.

"Because I was running so badly, my coach wasn't listening to any excuse I was giving him because he thought I was just trying to get out of the session.

"So I started plodding along and left it for a bit...

"A week later I was doing some stuff on the track, running around a bend I thought, 'This doesn't feel quite right'.

"So I went and got it scanned and I had a bone bruise on the knee.

"They were quite happy with the fact it was just a bruise and there was no cartilage damage, but what actually transpired was that...the cartilage just started to degenerate.

"I didn't get that scan and that message until November 2009."

Kwakye had actually had double Achilles surgery in September 2009 and was about to go back to full training when the knee flared up.

"It was absolutely massive and it was clunking," she says.

"I got a scan that day and three hours later they were like, 'It's not good news, I think we are going to have to operate' and I just burst into tears.

"I just thought, 'Right, I've had the whole of 2009 and they're going to tell me that now I've got to take out pretty much 2010.'"

As Kwakye describes it, the surgeon, Fares Haddad ("He worked on [footballer] Ledley King") took "a thumbnail piece of cartilage out".

"It's called microfracture surgery," she says.

"When they looked at my knee, there was a bit of cartilage just flapping, so they had to cut it all off and drill about eight holes into the bone.

"What that does, it makes the bone bleed, which forms new cartilage. So in that little space where they took the cartilage off, I now have some new cartilage...

"They were quite concerned because they weren't sure how big the defect was going to be.

"So what they did with mine was strip it all off and sent it to a lab.

"Worst-case scenario, what would have happened is they would have grown that piece of cartilage in the lab and put it back in.

"Thank God they didn't have to do that."

She couldn't walk or drive for 10 or 12 weeks, so her mum moved in with her.

"She became my resident psychologist," Kwakye says

Since then, she has slowly fought her way back towards peak fitness – with the aid of a spot of retail therapy.

"I love shoes," she confesses.

"I couldn't wear, obviously, any high heels with my knee injury, but - you know what? - the funny thing was, I bought so many pairs of shoes when I was on crutches."



Now, at last, Kwakye (pictured middle) is back, registering a 7.28sec 60 metres last month in the South of England Championships at Lee Valley, before a less impressive 7.40 secs at the Aviva International in Glasgow last weekend.

She describes her "relief" at that Lee Valley performance in comic-book terms.

"It's almost like you're a superhero and your power goes," she says.

"And then you get it back - I just want to make sure it's back at the same level that it got taken away from, if not better."

In the immediate future, the European Indoor Championships in Paris and the Worlds in South Korea are now on her radar screen, but of course the ultimate goal must be London 2012 and bettering that unexpected sixth-place finish in Beijing.

It is in this context that she describes Daegu 2011 as "a huge stepping-stone", adding: "If I've got any aspirations of doing anything good in 2012, I need to put myself up against the best in the world.

"I can't let them come to my backyard and beat me, I'd go crazy. The embarrassment."

She has made an encouraging start, but it will not be easy.

One thing you can rely on, though: there will be no more entertaining chronicler of her attempts to get on an Olympic podium than Kwakye herself.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938 and Kwakye's at www.twitter.com/jnettekwakye