Steph Twell is positively raring to go

It's one of those X-rated bits of sporting footage, one of the moments where you instinctively turn your head from the television screen. It was back in February and middle-distance prodigy Steph Twell was 600 yards clear and cruising to an easy win in a cross-country race at Hannut in Belgium when her ankle suddenly went from under her.

One minute she was flying, the next she had crashed and burned, lying at the bottom of a ditch and screaming in agony. Even then she tried to carry on, but immediately sagged to the ground. The ramifications weren't lost on her: as soon as she heard the ankle snap, she says she "immediately knew it would turn my whole life upside down".

The ankle fracture, the first serious injury of 21-year-old Twell's career, couldn't have come at a worse time. This summer was supposed to be the time she ramped up her preparations for the 1500 and 5000-metres at London 2012. Instead, she is almost five months into an enforced six-month lay-off that will end after the big races of the summer have all run their course.

It should be a recipe for a despondent young athlete, but Twell, who finally starts running again this weekend, has a startlingly different perspective. "I always knew that I wanted to go to the Olympics," she says, "but it's only when it's almost taken away from you that you realise just how important it is to you. Like a lot of elite athletes I've been training three times a day since I was nine, and you get used to that as a way of life but sometimes you become jaded without knowing it, so it definitely helps to take a step back sometimes. All this time off has made me feel refreshed. I've got my hunger back and am really enjoying training."

Unable to run, Twell has instead undergone a punishing routine that has included hours of hydrotherapy and work to restore her impaired balance. Sessions on the pilates reformer machine beloved of elite synchronised swimmers have been interspersed with work to build up the calf muscles around her damaged ankle. This weekend she starts running on a specialised treadmill, an Alter-G, that offloads up to 20 per cent of her bodyweight.

Twell has a well-educated sports medical team to aid her speedy recovery, but with a degree in strength and conditioning science from St Mary's University in Twickenham, the middle distance runner has also found the whole recovery process fascinating. Twell says that being able to relate her almost nerdy knowledge of biomechanics to her own body has been the key to remaining in control and upbeat."I haven't lost any cardiovascular fitness, and I don't actually think my preparation (for 2012] has been put back at all," she says. "At Beijing I was four years ahead of schedule and I'm still ahead of where I expected to be. I've probably been training harder as an injured athlete than I would otherwise have been, and more importantly I've really been enjoying training."

Twell prefers not to dwell on the fact that her injury disrupted a rich vein of form. After a patchy 2009, in 2010 she set a personal best in the 1500m and broke her 5000m best by an incredible 22 seconds, simultaneously breaking Yvonne Murray's 15-year-old mark by setting a new Scottish record of 14.54.08.

Her highly-rated coach Mick Woods has been her rock. He's been with her since she was nine and "is far more than a coach" to the Aldershot-based runner, who says his pro-active approach and empathy have been the key to her trouble-free rehabilitation.

Scottish athletics has much to thank Woods for because it's difficult to overstate how important Twell - the daughter of a lieutenant colonel in the Army who opted to run for Scotland because her mother, Isobel Hanlon, is from Paisley - is to Scotland's involvement in 2012. With a resurgent Lee McConnell possibly confined to the relay and Eilish McColgan remaining on the brink of a breakthrough, a fall-off in form for Scotland's hammer and javelin throwers means that Twell and Perth's Commonwealth silver medal winner in the 400-metre hurdles, Eilidh Child, could be the only two Scots performing in individual events in next year's Olympics track and field events.

Nor is Twell a bit player. Regularly compared to Paula Radcliffe, she's actually been far more successful at the same stage of her career than the feted marathon runner: by 19 Twell had run 1500m two seconds faster than Radcliffe's PB, she is unique in winning three successive European junior cross-country titles, and her World Junior Championships gold medal was the first 1500m medal by any Briton in the event's 22 years.

With invaluable big-game experience, huge things are expected of Twell, who was named European Athletics' rising star in 2008. No one is putting more pressure on her than the 21-year-old herself: running at London 2012 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and she has no intention of not being there.

"Besides," she laughs, "if I'm not out there on that track, my parents wouldn't be able to go because we didn't win any tickets in the ballot. We couldn't have that now, could we?"

Steph Twell is an ambassador for McCain, Principal Partner of UK Athletics. For more information on how to get involved in athletics, please visit www.mccaintrackandfield.co.uk