SARA CARRIGAN won gold in the Athens road race as a 23-year-old, a title that she will defend today, aged 27, in Beijing. So much has happened in between.

After winning bronze in the 2006 Commonwealth Games time trial and placing seventh in the road race, Carrigan walked away from the sport that yanked her out of her Queensland home as a 15-year-old.

Once the all-consuming milestone of winning Olympic gold had been achieved, that drive that had always made it OK for her to miss family birthdays and ignore the fact she was envious of the freewheeling student existence of her friends suddenly evaporated.

So Carrigan pulled the pin, not knowing if she'd ever go back.

Carrigan was "discovered" 12 years ago, and spent six or seven months in Europe at a time, entering about 60 races in a year. She missed her year 12 formal. She'd hear about the fun her friends on the Gold Coast were getting up to rather than enjoy it with them.

"I remember one year going away and my youngest brother was shorter than me, he was a little boy, and when I came back his voice had broken, his hands were bigger and he was taller than me. That was a little bit sad," Carrigan said.

"When I took that break I seriously didn't know if I was going to start again. I really wanted that passion to be there because I knew how much I'd struggled in 2005 when I didn't have that motivation."

Carrigan only dipped into the lifestyle she wanted for around eight months. She slept in and worked as a sales coordinator.

"I was actually able to go to university on campus," she said.

Soon, she will finish a Bachelor of Business degree with a property development major. But the desire to apply herself to sport once again hit Carrigan in an instant.

"It was really weird. It just snapped, like that," she said, clicking her fingers. She was at home on the Gold Coast and met up with a gang of local cyclists, with Robbie McEwen among them.

"Then, when I started training in '07 it was like a rebirth for me as an athlete. I sort of had a different perspective and, I guess, different motivations, though my passion is as strong as it ever has been."

Carrigan has been based in Belgium this year. She intends to live on the Gold Coast again one day, but right now there is no wistfulness.

"Four years on I'm a little more confident in myself and what I can do with the experience I had in Athens," she said. "I can't believe it's already four years."