My dad has an ice-cream shop in Newlyn, Cornwall, called Jelbert’s. It’s been in our family for about 100 years. I remember when my dad would go to work and we were getting ready for school, we had this ritual of running to the window of our house and shouting: “Bring us back some ice-cream!” Later on, I worked in the shop for a bit, but I mainly ate the ice-cream. Jelbert’s only sells one flavour: vanilla, in a cup or cone, and you can add a Flake and clotted cream. The recipe hasn’t changed in years. My dad doesn’t like to change anything – I think Cornish folk don’t – and he’s very low-key, very understated. When I won the Olympics in London, everyone was going past the shop beeping their horns. And he just got a Weetabix box, ripped it up and wrote on the back, “It’s gold!” and he stuck it in the window. That’s a perfect representation of my dad. I’ve never demonstrated self-restraint with ice-cream, or anything else. I was one of five siblings and if something was put down on the table, you grabbed it and ate what you could, because it was always a fight for who was going to get it first. Everything tastes better outside. As a teenager I’d go out with my friends on kayaks with a fishing line behind us and catch mackerel. Then we would cook them on the beach over a fire. A lot of the best meals I’ve ever had were sat on a cliff eating a picnic or on the beach, on the sand dunes. My gold-silver-bronze of chocolate bars are Boost, Dairy Milk and Wispa. I don’t need anything fancy. I routinely have four full meals a day when I’m in full training: breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, dinner as standard, and then snacks throughout the day and sometimes a reasonable sized meal before bed. It becomes automatic and I won’t feel hungry because if I feel hungry that’s my body telling me I need to feed up and I have a snack. A second breakfast is the best meal of the day. In the morning, I get up and I’m thinking about the first training session of the day so I’ll usually have something like porridge. Second breakfast, you’ve got more time, you’ve woken up a bit. You’ve done a session, so you can have eggs, bagels with peanut butter and a bit of jam, which is pretty much my favourite second breakfast. You can have whatever you want for that one. After the Rio Olympics, I left the sport and stopped training. I very quickly realised that I had to think more than I’ve ever done about the amount I was eating. With a more sedentary lifestyle, you can’t eat the same as you would for 5,500-calories-a-day rowing lifestyle. So now I’m back doing it again I just really enjoy the fact that I can have the freedom to just eat as I feel. If I need more fuel, there’s always the children’s leftovers. The other night, the three of them had chicken breast and some pasta and I had my dinner, then an hour or so later finished off theirs. Then again, I don’t think that’s unique to athletes: probably a lot of parents end up with dinner being the leftovers of whatever the kids didn’t want. I probably eat more than my husband [naturalist and presenter Steve Backshall] when I’m in full-time training. But he’s a good cook; he’s much better than me. Often I’ll do the cooking for the little ones when I can, then when he can he’ll do the cooking and that’s when most plates are clean. In the Olympic Village, you can eat whatever you want, anytime, day or night. You could go to the British section and get a roast dinner or you go to the Chinese section and it will be catered really specifically for the Chinese athletes. And you’ve got basketball sat next to judo sat next to a weightlifter sat next to marathon runners. So everybody’s calorific needs and physical needs are all so different that I think they just cater to everybody as much as they can. When I’m feeling homesick, I’ll have a Cornish pasty. Whenever I go home, I come back and my boot is pretty much smelling like a Cornish pasty because I just fill it with as many as I can and put them in the freezer. The most memorable meal of my life was my wedding. It was on a clifftop in Cornwall, overlooking the sea and St Michael’s Mount. The meal was amazing and all local: freshly caught crab and my dad’s ice-cream for pudding. MY FAVOURITE THINGS Food Ice-cream from Jelbert’s. Not always with the Flake, but always clotted cream. And I always go for a cone, rather than a tub, because I figure it’s just an extra biscuit. Drink Oh, coffee. I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker till I had children but now I have my first cup by 5.30am, then by the time I’ve left the house at 7.30am, I’ve had another. I have about three cups a day. Restaurant Anong Thai, near where we live [in Cookham, Berkshire]. There’s a sea bass dish that’s amazing. Dish to make Spaghetti bolognese. It’s the best of a bad bunch from my repertoire.