Time is right to target family life, says archer Alison

But despite announcing her retirement last week, archer Alison Williamson has one more target in her sights – to become a foster mother.

"I have thought about doing it for a long time," she says with her hands protectively wrapped around a cup of Earl Grey.

"When you are gallivanting around the world you don't have time to have children and to raise a family. So I have always known I would not have kids but would like to look at helping children who need some help and support."

Gazing across the living room of their new home she looks into the eyes of her husband Will Conaghan and adds: "It is something we have been talking about for some time. And now the time seems right."

Alison, 42, grew up in Chelmick, near Church Stretton, and married 44-year-old Will last year.

She had trained as a teacher between the Athens and Beijing Olympics and has returned to the classroom, teaching at Marshlands Special School in Stafford.

"One of the things I have discovered since working at Marshlands is that there are children with special needs who go on respite holidays to give their parents and carers some much-needed time off. So that is something we are thinking about doing at first. Probably during the summer holidays."

The pair have recently moved to Great Haywood, near Stafford, and have already decorated a room ready to start taking a foster child.

They have started talks with fostering agencies and Alison revealed a key moment that inspired her to become a foster mother.

"I went to an awards evening with Shropshire foster carers which was for the children.

"The evening was incredibly uplifting. I understand it will be hard work but rewarding.

"I know I now have the time to give back – it would be nice to help others who aren't so lucky."

Jointly with eventers Mary King and Nick Skelton she holds the record of competing at six Olympic Games.

She admits retiring was not an easy move. "It was a tough decision," she said. "I go into schools with Energize Shropshire and a lot of the kids keep saying 'are you going for a seventh?'

"But I am a competitor and there is still that little bit of me that wants to do it. If I was going to Rio this would be the year that I would have to do all the training.

"I took a break after London and I enjoyed going into schools and that sort of thing and I wouldn't be able to do that if I was training full time. I hadn't had a break previously except down to injury. I have been working and teaching, got married and moved house. It was about doing more of the things that I wanted to do. Even going to Rugeley tip on a Sunday afternoon I can enjoy. Or at least I tell myself that," she jokes having spent a busy afternoon painting the garden fence. "I went on the Eurostar to Paris for my honeymoon which I had never done before," she said.

"I thought 'this is how civilised people travel' because I was always used to travelling with loads of kit and equipment. It is nice trying to have to fit everything into a very rigid and structured lifestyle worked around training and competing."

Her greatest success came in 2004 when she won individual bronze at the games in Athens by a single point in a nail-biting match with Shu Chi Yuan of Chinese Taipei. Four years later in Beijing she narrowly missed out on adding to her collection as part of the British team which lost in the bronze-medal match.

So why not opt for a career as a coach in her beloved sport which she was introduced to by her parents Tom and Sue who founded the Long Mynd Archers in Church Stretton? "I don't think I have the patience," she whispers before giggling. "In schools when I'm doing basic coaching it's great with the enthusiasm but if I had to do it every day I think I would lose my patience." As well as Olympic success she won individual and team commonwealth silver medals in Delhi in 2010, along with a host of other international and domestic titles. She was awarded an MBE for services to archery. And perhaps her most controversial move was posing nude with her strategically placed bow for an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1996.

But one amusing anecdote takes place with her friend and fellow Team GB archer Charlotte Burgess in the final days of the Beijing Games in 2008 involving a Knight, a rower and a minor security breach in pursuit of Usain Bolt.

She said: "It was the week after our event so we had our passes to go to all the other sports.

"We were rushing around from venue to venue and the problem with Beijing is that there was a central transport hub so you had to head there to get the bus to the other venues which made it really hard when you did not have much time.

"We were at the velodrome and needed to get to the Bird's Nest stadium to see Usain Bolt. Then we saw Ben Hunt-Davis the rower who was there with the British Olympic Association (BOA). This was like our eureka moment and we thought me must have an official car which could drive us straight there. Then we saw he was Sir Clive Woodward so we thought he must have a car as a BOA official.

"So we sort of wandered over and got chatting to them and hinted at getting a lift. But then they revealed someone had taken their car.

"So now all four of us were in this mad rush to get to the Bird's Nest.

"We got to this fenced area where we could see the stadium. We were starting to squirm as it was really close to race time.

"We could see it as it was right in front of us – we just couldn't get to it.

"So we asked if we could go in but the security guy told us it was an exit not and entrance but to try further down at another gate.

"So the four of us all ran down the closed bit of road to the other gate but were also told we couldn't go in.

"I thought Clive Woodward was going to start pulling rank when suddenly this guy pulled a wheelie bin to the fence and Ben gave us all a foot up and we climbed over and ran into the stadium. We eventually got to see the race after this mad flurry."

Alison is now set on returning to the classroom and who could be more of an inspiration to the new generation of impressionable youngsters?

"I tell them that I've been to the Olympics six times which does impress them," she says. Before quickly adding: "But it doesn't compare with the response I get when I tell them I don't own a television."