Steve Redgrave is an acquired taste, one of those quintessentially English heroes who don't translate well into other cultures. In his heyday, when England always expected and Redgrave always delivered, he always seemed a little too stiff and contemptuous of the world around him, just a little too priggishly certain about being the man everyone else loved to hate. You watched the Beeb just to see if he'd drown.

It's been 16 years though and his durability, his toughness, his sheer bloody mindedness wears you down. He has earned our respect. There is no tougher sport. There is no greater competitor. If he achieves his fifth gold in five Olympics tomorrow it will be a mark unsurpassed by anything that happens on the track or in the pool. Steve Redgrave. It seems that he has grown up in four-yearly instalments. The quiet broad-shouldered 22-year-old who'd just abandoned single sculling to partake in a coxless four back in LA. Gold. Then granted half a profile in the celebrated pairing of Holmes and Redgrave which won in Seoul. Gold again.

By then there was some hint of what Redgrave was willing to subordinate in the name of success. For eight years he hardly spoke to Andy Holmes. In a boat together, dependent on each other in a way that few team-mates will ever experience, Redgrave just let the silence grow and fester.

By Barcelona Matt Pinsent had replaced the injured Holmes and a new pair was born, with Redgrave clearly the senior partner. Olympic golds followed in Barcelona and Atlanta, each one a notch on the post of Redgrave's decline. In Atlanta Pinsent emerged as a phenomenon in his own right. Yet it is Redgrave who fascinates. The man who said "just shoot me if you ever see me in another boat", here he is at the heart of a crew known, like backing singers to a lounge act, as The Steve Redgrave Four.

He has always been at his best when proving something to somebody. Having come to Sydney widely derided as the weak link in the British coxless four, Redgrave has shown not a chink in his armour. He has been imperiously tough. He has needed to be. The respect of his crew mates as well as the public was on the line.

"The first aim was to go and win the World Cup series, we did that in the first two races. We didn't have to go to Lucerne to win."

Ah Lucerne. The British four lost their semi-final and wound up fourth in the final, a collapse which was literally unspeakable. It is spoken about as a landmark disaster but has never been explained. The suspicion is that Redgrave blew up.

The fingers are pointed at Redgrave for good reason. A 38-year-old diabetic in an Olympic-bound boat is an unusual enough sight, one who collapsed in one of the final workouts before team selection is even rarer. When Pinsent and Redgrave raced Cracknell and Foster in pairs races late in their training year, it was Pinsent and Redgrave who habitually lost. But yesterday at Penrith, an hour from Sydney, there he was. Britain had smoked through their semi-final. Redgrave's aura remains intact.

You watch them emerge, stretching their muscles on the wooden dock and you can tell even through the banter that his three team-mates are still in awe of him. Redgrave has put body and mind together. Tomorrow he should take a fourth-seeded crew to the gold medal position. His last miracle of grit.

His mood then is the mood the team takes for the day as they orbit him like satellites. Five gold medals at five different Games. He's on the edge of that, in a sport that demands more than virtually any other. They watch him even as he moves among them, picking up the intensity.

"I think this is possibly my last Olympics," he joked yesterday, "so I'm trying to enjoy it." And great was the laughter.

He will not collapse tomorrow. Countless times he has pulled it out. In 1992 he became ill with ulcerative colitis in the April before the Games. He recovered to cement the relationship with Pinsent and take a gold medal as part of an unprecedented run of 61 races without loss.

Back in the early days he was drawn, not surprisingly, to the almost monastic loneliness and rigours of the single sculls. Single sculling, the sport he seems born for, has been his only failure. The son of a builder, he left school with a woodworking qualification when he was 16 and ever since he has been using his six-foot four-inch frame to make boats pass through water.

He is devoted to his wife Ann and his daughters, but beyond that he has teammates, not friends. Having retired from rowing after Atlanta, he returned four months later without bothering to inform Pinsent, his pairs partner of eight years.

In Penrith he watched with satisfaction as rivals struggled through the other semi-final. He is obsessively competitive, one of those borderline cases who can turn the hint of a slight into a four-year motivational tool. As such, losing in Lucerne and absorbing the rumours that surrounded the loss appears to have wound him up nicely.

"We just won our semi-final and that was our main objective. We did think France would be in the top three but they didn't perform to the level. I thought we had a solid row. Can't ask for too much more. Four of the boats from Lucerne were in the other heat, so that's one gone. I was hoping to draw the Italians (winners in Lucerne) because it would have been nice to have beaten them again."

Outside it was clammy hot and rain was threatening. Jurgen Grobler, the coach, was trying to hurry Redgrave along. He dawdled, speaking on his mobile to his wife Ann.

"How long you going to be then."

Pause.

"Half an hour? Well I'll wait for you and we'll walk it together."

Grobler shrugged. Redgrave doing it his way till the end.

"I've never seen you so happy," says a journalist passing him.

Redgrave says nothing, just effects a look that is half soppy, half stern. The journalist moves on. Steve Redgrave shakes his head and lets his face crease into a grin.