FOUR years ago Ian Wiley started down the Olympic slalom course as number two in world kayaking and one of his country's surest medal hopes. A hundred and ten seconds later he was out of the running, inconsolable and suddenly inconsistent.

Talking over the dark years that followed Barcelona while he packed for this weekend's World Cup event, it was easy to discern the almost obsessive temperament that at one point would have seen Wiley give up the sport he loves rather than consider second time round disappointment at Atlanta.

It's a double sided trait that has those who know Wiley describing him variously as resilient but stubborn, sometimes mad and sometimes moody, as having all the ingredients of a winner yet on occasion seemingly arrogant. Using their wealth of personality tests, sports psychologists might just say he has the typical "bohemian characteristics" common to most international kayakers and canoeists.

They might more usefully have quoted arch bohemian, Oscar Wilde, to the effect that while a little sincerity can be dangerous, a great deal of it can be fatal. Wiley has more self belief than is healthily decent for anyone other than the sporting elite and a comfortable warm up win before Barcelona bad him on the phone to his manager asking how he would deal with the reception when he arrived home with Olympic gold.

Wiley probably still winces when he's asked what went wrong on the day, but modern telecommunications technology makes him sound at least phlegmatic about the whole episode. "I was in great form and my practice run would have got me a medal," he starts, and then launches into the time penalties that left him four seconds off the podium in eighth place and the disappointment that no doubt had half of the country crying with him in front of their television sets.

"I just raced basically like a novice. I remember thinking as I went down that I wasn't paddling the course as freely as I could, I guess I was tense and let the pressure get to me.

"Right after Barcelona I had a loss of form for the next two years and my world ranking went right down to twenty second or twenty third. It was such an emotional let down not achieving what l wanted to achieve, it took some time to shake it off. There was a time when I was thinking `I am going to quit and that was the first time that thought had entered my mind before.

It was four or five months before he got back into a regular training routine and even then he concedes that his mind still wasn't focussed on the task. The two years that followed Barcelona were marked by faltering motivation and inconsistency.

"He was probably the most dispirited man of the Olympics and for a time he couldn't take it, but he has that will to win, is as competitive as hell, and once he's overcome a problem he's on a high again, says one insider. Central to his recovery and return to the world's top ten, has been his move last year to Nottingham to take advantage of the tailored training facilities at the Holme Pierrepont Watersports Centre.

There he has teamed up with an old adversary turned coach, Marjan Strukelj, who retired from international competition last year after a career that won him World Championship gold with the Slovenian team, individual silver and sixth place ahead of Wiley at the Olympics.

"Me and Marjan were good friends before that and when I heard he was retiring I asked him if he would coach me. He knows my weak points and strong points.

"I'd be one of the best technicians on the scene but my relative weakness has been my strength, which we've been working on over the winter. In the past I've relied on finesse and technique to give me the speed, some people work very hard down a course whereas I look as if I am cruising, which is quite deceiving."

Wiley trains two or three times a day and he says that it has become a test of his own character to recognise, if not fully accept, that there are human limitations. "Everything has to be perfect for me in training and if it goes wrong on the day it will be playing on my mind afterwards. Marjan's been helping me realise that it can't be perfect all the time and generally working on my temperament.

"It does annoy me when I don't perform to the best of my ability and I guess that is reflected in the way I paddle, but l am a perfectionist in a sport that is difficult to be perfect in."

Lately he has been concentrating on speed work to sharpen up for a punishing itinerary that starts this weekend in Slovenia, moves over to the Olympic course on the Ocoee river, Tennessee, for training, before returning to the World Cup schedule in Spain and Germany and finishing with another international race in France.

Competing at this level takes money. Wiley recently received £15,000 in the form of an Olympic Council grant to top up his sponsorship deal with CARA Computer People but his points to finance as the major barrier to making the leap to international status.

Finance will be one consideration when at 28, Wiley decides on his future later this year. The other factor will be whether he medals or not and from experience he has learnt the value of reticence when making predictions in what is one of the most hotly contested canoeing events, with Slovenians, Germans, Americans and British in among the leading pack.

"You could name ten guys who could medal, it's like downhill skiing with a matter of hundredths and hundredths of seconds separating everyone, on the day anyone could take it but the course itself is a classic, it's very technical and that should favour my style."

Given the determination and resilience he has shown in the last few years, it might not be stretching the truth to say that Wiley will once again start down the Olympic slalom course in July as one of his country's surest medal hopes.