Anna Watkins has revealed she has struggled to get used to the limelight ? after going ?cold turkey? in her bid to win Olympic rowing gold.
The double sculler, who triumphed with partner Katherine Grainger in London, admits getting used to being in demand is not easy.
Their quest for gold had been well-publicised leading up to the event at Eton Dorney as Grainger had won three successive silver medals at previous Games.
Watkins said: ?It did surprise us that it was such a big story. To us it was about our little project and we both struggled slightly with the publicity ? it?s not my natural home in the public eye.
?Kath was presented as if she?d always come second and didn?t have six world titles to her name and I didn?t have the chance to talk about where I had come from.?
Watkins, 29, claimed it was a different scenario to that in Beijing four years before, where her double sculls bronze with former partner Elise Laverick barely registered with the public.
?In Beijing I was able to go and win a medal and go pretty much under the radar, I went back to training afterwards and that was that,? she explained.
?Obviously from a long way out, we knew London would be completely different, you could see that by the number of journalists turning up for our media days. But we weren?t sure how different it would be until the time came.
?While we were at the Games we watched the other sports on the BBC red button as we didn?t want the fillers inbetween events, we just wanted to see what happened without any build-up and didn?t want to put any more pressure on ourselves with seeing any previews of our event.?
Part of the key to Grainger and Watkins? success, it seems, was a decision to close themselves off from the outside world, ignoring social media comment and press reports.
Leek-born Watkins added: ?I switched off from Twitter and Facebook on the night of the opening ceremony and didn?t dare switch back on until we had finished.
?It would only have taken one person to say something and it could play on your mind and disrupt your preparations and even your race. I also turned my iPhone off and switched to a ?10 pay-as-you-go phone and only gave five people the number. I went cold turkey!?
It is the aftermath, though, which the four-time world championship medallist says has been eye-opening.
?I found the first three weeks after the Games really difficult,? said Watkins.
?I think it was the shock of losing my routine and not having something I was working towards any more.
?I realised I needed to get away from it so me and my husband went to France for a week.?
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