I interviewed her 20 years ago, saw her on several occasions thereafter, and what follows is a look at her life and times - including the record-breaking ones - based primarily on that first encounter.

For it was in February 1997 that I turned up at her quiet bungalow, in the tiny West Australian town of Mandurah, about an hour south of Perth.

The door opens and ... it's all smiles.

"Betty is expecting you, come in, come in," says a kindly, bespectacled woman who introduces herself as Rhonda.

The glare of the western sun gives way to hot shadows, and from down the hall comes the soft whirr of a motor, the clickety-click of rubber wheels moving over tiles, and it really is Betty Cuthbert.

Different from the famous photos, certainly - always breasting the tape first with her mouth wide open - but it is her, and no doubt about it.

The 58-year-old still has the same kind of hair, the same open expression, the same friendly grin. The motorised wheelchair is admittedly a big difference, but anyway ...

Firstly and most obviously, she has the aura of a very happy person. Welcoming, pleased to chat and certainly not "so long at death's door she might very well have been mistaken for its knocker", as I had expected.

While she has power only in one arm to operate the wheelchair control, there is neither an air of depression nor of decay about her.

She is in a mood to talk, and we'll go straight to the obvious. Her. Her life. Her life and times.

"When I was growing up," she says, "I just liked running. I would run everywhere."

At that early stage the horizons of her "everywhere" in Sydney's north-western suburbs were not that huge, but still. They extended at least from her parents' struggling plant nursery to Ermington Primary School and back - and that was plenty wide enough.

"Ever since I was eight," she continues, as her friend Rhonda Gillam hovers close and smiling, "I knew I could run fast, because at school I beat all the boys, and my teacher encouraged me to join the running club. From the age of 13, when we had Jubilee school races, I won the 75 yards, and then I used to win the state championships and it gradually progressed ... "

The young Betty Cuthbert in fact ran so fast, so consistently, that she was invited to ever bigger meetings, continued to win, and was eventually invited to compete in the biggest athletic meeting of them all ... the Olympic Games.

"It's funny looking back on it," she says with a smile. "I wasn't fanatical about running - I never had any heroes or anything - it all just happened."

She remembers going out for the Olympic final of the 100 metres, there in front of the roaring hordes of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, knowing her mum was there somewhere - and that dad, her twin sister and other brother and sister would be listening to the radio at home - and feeling strangely confident. And very focused.

"Well, I wanted to win, naturally. I just had that instinct, always have. People were so close to you as you walked out to the ground - they leaned over the short fence wanting autographs - and I thought, 'No way, I don't care what they think of me.' I wasn't going to stop, I was just going to do what I had to do. I was a bit one-track minded like that. I would not let anything sway me."

Particularly not her mouth ...

Seventy-five metres down the track, in the race of her life, "I can still remember my mouth was open so wide it hurt, and I just thought to myself, 'I haven't got time to shut it now.' "

Flying like the wind, it was gold, gold, gold for Australia, and the sobriquet "Golden Girl" was well on its way to being born.

She was everything 1950s Australia adored - an extremely attractive but demure, God-fearing young woman - and she was clearly one of the finest athletes of her day, if not the finest.

"But I wasn't ready for all the publicity," she says with a wry laugh.

"I was very, very shy, and didn't know how to handle public attention. I wanted to just be able to live my life like I always did."

One thing had already changed though, straight from winning the 100 metres.

"Once you are in the public eye you must think about all the people, not just you," she said. "You just think of all the people you let down if you lose. Well, I didn't want that to happen to people I knew."

It certainly didn't happen to anyone she knew during those Olympics. Within three days, Betty had won gold in the 200 metres and yet another in the 4 x 100 metres relay.

Golden Girl was truly launched. From that moment on, as a three-time Olympic gold medallist, she could not move without applause and acclamation at every step.

And material rewards? You betcha!

In short order, she was named the ABC Sportswoman of the Year and was awarded a cutlery set. Sure she had to give it back, as it would have breached her amateur status - of course! - yet matters of money and the like never concerned her unduly anyway.

"I really just wanted to go back to work with Dad in the nursery," she says.

Which she did, the best she could between meeting the commitments of a genuine Australian heroine and continuing her athletic career.

By the time of the 1960 Rome Olympics, all Australia was willing "Our Betty" to add to her golden haul, but this time she came home empty-handed ...

"I had a leg injury, and the lead-up to the Olympics was in the winter here. We had nowhere to train because of winter, and so we trained between the football matches and it was cold," she says, as distant memories pass before her eyes.

Milk in your coffee? Thank you, Rhonda, yes. And please do go on, Betty.

"I knew that all my running talent was a God-given gift, and on the way home from Rome, on the ship Oronsay, I said to God, 'Have I done enough?' "

There was no reply to speak of, but she retired anyway and went back to the nursery.

"And it was great. I didn't have to train, I didn't have to worry about running shoes, I was happy."

She got on with her life. Then, as she tells it, something happened that may seem exceedingly strange to the rest of us.

"I was working in the nursery one afternoon when I heard this voice saying, 'Run again.' "

Who was it?

"God."

The voice, she says, continued for the next two months, though "probably in my head".

"It got so bad at night I couldn't sleep. I wouldn't tell anybody in case they, too, tried to talk me into it, because I knew Mum would have.

"In the end, I said, 'OK, you win, I will run again.' "

And she did.

She was soon training for the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, where she at least achieved victory as part of the relay, and was on her way again.

While her raw pace in the sprints had dropped to the point at which she was out of serious contention, the good news was that the 400 metres was going to be included for women for the first time at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Cuthbert set her sights on that, as she'd long fancied herself over longer distances anyway.

"I knew I had the ability, I just knew that God was with me all the way."

So clear the track. The Olympic final of the 1964 women's 400 metres will be on in five minutes.

"I was lying on the bench and they said, 'It's time to go,' and I just knew - I knew it wasn't me that got up from the bench," she says again, a little dreamily.

"We were downstairs and we had to go up on to the track, along a dark corridor. I was very relaxed. The girl in front of me was humming a tune, and so I hummed along with her.

"Out on the track it was so windy I said to [fellow Australian] Judy Amore, 'Jude, watch the wind,' because I knew we were going to have to run into it some time or other."

On your marks. Get set. Go like the clappers!

"I was in lane two, Judy Amore was in lane three, and she was going ahead of me, pulling ahead, and I thought, 'No, I am going to let her go,' because at that stage, going up the back straight, I had to have a mental rest."

Into the last bend then, on cruise control, and Amore was still ahead.

"And I thought, 'It's time to go ... now.' As soon as you get past that first part of the curve, it's time to go.

"I just thought, 'Well, I've got to get past Judy first, so I got Judy and I looked ahead and there was [Britain's] Ann Packer out there in front in lane seven.And I thought, 'Now I have got to go to the finish and leave her.'

"But then, as I got into the straight, I could hear her. I knew she was there ... "

You could hear Anne Packer?

"Yes. I knew it was just between the two of us because I had already passed Judy. So I knew she wasn't very far behind either and I thought, 'Well, it is either her or me.' All of the way up I thought, 'It's her or me, her or me,' and I thought, 'I have trained just as hard as her, so it was either her or me," so I just kept going until the finish."

GOLD!

And fade to black ...

"After I'd won that fourth gold medal, I really felt as if I had done enough, and so I retired."

She was happy, living at home still, working in the nursery, enjoying a quiet life.

Everything seemed hunky-dory. Her place in Australian sporting history was secure, just as was her life in the bosom of her family. Then, in the late 1960s, she started to notice some odd physical sensations.

"There was a tingling feeling in my fingers, and spots in my vision. It felt like I was going blind, the television was going blurry, it was dark. My legs were getting redder."

Over the next two years there were many trips to the doctor, endless tests, and then the moment came.

"I said to the doctor, 'Have I got multiple sclerosis?' He said, 'I think so, but I didn't want to tell you ... '

"Well, I didn't believe I had it. And I decided to keep it mostly to myself. Dad didn't know, and my twin sister didn't know."

Bit by bit, the degenerative condition took hold, and by the end of the 1970s she finally couldn't hide it from her father and twin sister any longer, and she told them that she did indeed have MS.

"Dad said, 'I am glad you didn't tell me when you first got it.' But my sister was very upset that I hadn't shared it with her."

Strangely, talking about her condition like this, and obviously now grievously afflicted by it physically, there seems no trace of bitterness in her, no agony that such a healthy life should have come under such attack for no apparent reason. What gives?

"Because I knew the truth - God gave it to me for a reason - that's all I used to think. I never, ever, once said, 'Why me?' "

And what was her God's reason?

"Because God wanted me to use this to help other people. My condition generated a lot of publicity, and because of that a lot of people gave to the MS Society and it just went on from there ... "

Her life became full of many Christian study classes, which she gave with the help of Rhonda, who lived with her husband nearby. Rhonda was also a great physical help as a quasi-nurse, and there was obviously a strong bond between the two, based not least on their common belief in Christianity.

"I keep telling her she is going to get out of that wheelchair," says Rhonda with great conviction, "that the Lord Jesus Christ is going to fully get in her heart, and get her to get up and walk, and that she must believe in that."

Betty?

"I am going to do that," says the former athlete quite serenely, "I know I am going to do that."

That aside, you seem very happy?

"Yes, I am happier now than I have ever been. I know where I've come from, and I know where I'm going to - heaven."

Her post-running life, financially, was difficult as MS prevented her from working and what money she did have was mostly lost due to bad investments but she never complained and her Christian community, led by Rhonda, did a great deal to look after her.

At the time I interviewed Betty Cuthbert, her mother was 87, and still living in the old house at Ermington. From the front garden she could look across the Parramatta River and see the Betty Cuthbert Stadium, the warm-up track already built on the site where the 2000 Olympics would be held.

It was testament to the extraordinary life her daughter had led. Her contribution, too, was recognised, as she was one of the last Olympic torch-bearers in the final lap at the Olympic Stadium on that fabulous night in 2000 when Cathy Freeman lit the cauldron to get the greatest Games under way.

In 2012, she, with two carers, flew to Barcelona to be the first and only Australian to be inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame. The highlight of the night, for her, came when the most famous inductee of all, Usain Bolt - of course, the fastest human on the planet - came across, bowed, touched her tenderly on the shoulder and exclaimed: "Four Olympic gold medals and 16 world records ... wow! You sure could run ... "

For Betty, this was the pinnacle of her sporting life.

Vale, Golden Girl, Betty Cuthbert. Life delivered you extraordinary highs, and devastating lows. Your humility, serenity, faith and essential goodness never wavered through any of it.