Every year since her triumph in Vancouver, on a February night in 2010, Amy Williams has had a quiet celebration by herself to mark what she calls her "medal birthday".
She will pop a mini bottle of champagne, she says, a ritual that she doesn't want to overplay but keep as a subtle reminder of her days as the world's fastest woman on ice.
Five years later, and it is another British female skeleton racer who is marking her first anniversary as Olympic champion.
But Lizzy Yarnold, the former University of Gloucestershire student, won't be toasting this Valentine's Day with a glass of bubbly.
No, instead she will be back on the ice in Sochi, at Russia's Olympic Park, in the hope of sealing another world title exactly a year after she won Olympic gold on the very same track.
"She wants to be the greatest slider in history," said William, above, speaking with the Citizen about Yarnold's ambitions. "I wanted to be the first woman to get two Olympic medals but you are normally in the sport for a very long time before you are selected for the Olympics. Lizzy is still young and pretty much injury-free.
"She has been on a huge, intensive learning curve since she started and, at the moment, is pretty much untouchable. But I guess, for her, she is lucky that she is still young because there are times you wake up in the middle of the night in pain, wondering whether it is all worth it anymore."
Williams was Great Britain's first winter gold medal winner since Jeannette Altwegg won figure skating gold in the 1952 Olso games.
She is now a presenter for the BBC and spoke for the first time with Yarnold in what has been a year in the fast-lane.
And she met up with the former Cheltenham-based student for a Ski Sunday feature to air this weekend before she headed to Sochi.
"It was good to speak with her again," said Williams. "She is back in Sochi and, like many of the other athletes, I think she is interested to see what it is going to be like being back after a year.
"It will be a bit strange and the venue will be quite different. A year goes quickly. There is a sort of craziness after the Olympics that just takes hold of your life.
"It is no longer in your hands and can be exhausting, which I think that has perhaps been reflective in some of her earlier results this season and that crash she had in training.
"After last year, I told her to enjoy it as much as possible because it is one moment in your life you will never forget.
"When I came back into competition, I vividly remember going back into the changing room for the first time. It was like the first day back at school but with so much expectation."
Yarnold has thrown herself back into the deep-end and has no intention of taking a break from the sport until she is a double Olympic champion.
She spoke with the Citizen about the challenges of getting back into the groove once the dust has settled and she had come to terms with her achievement.
School visits and television appearances accompanied a nomination for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year awards, which followed her visit to Windsor Castle to receive an MBE from the Queen.
She is favourite to retain her world title today, her first step to the next games in PyeongChang, South Korea, where the Winter Olympics will return in 2018.
"People expect you to win every race and I guess you still have to manage that expectation," explained Williams, a fellow MBE, who went through all the same stages as Yarnold.
"On the flip-side of the skeleton sport, your previous results can be wiped away. It is very different every year - you can still have good days and bad days so, once you've got that Olympic medal, results don't matter year-on-year.
"Around other athletes, you can feel one and the same as everyone else and I think that they will all admit that, after the high of the Olympics, it is hard to come back for another four years."
It is a wonder what Yarnold's would look like if Williams didn't slide to gold. Would a Team GB programme have seen her talents while studying in Cheltenham? Would she have had the opportunities she long been grateful for?
"Lizzy is very strong," Williams continued, "and, whereas some people will only see her for a brief moment in a race, they don't see her flogging in the gym.
"There is generation of good sliders now. The number of runs they do now is much more than we used to. In Lizzy's first year, she will have done more practice runs than I did in four!
"Our equipment was falling apart and we would have to put sleds back together. It just shows how much the sport has changed and improved. "There was definitely a huge knock-on effect. That medal in Vancouver allowed more funding to help with its development."
