By Neil Silver, PA Sport, Paris

Hayley Tullett was going to give up competitive athletics at the end of this year if she had a disappointing season.

Instead, she is going home from Paris today with a World Championship 1,500metres bronze medal, and the belief she can earn a place on the podium at the Olympic Games in Athens next summer.

The Swansea-born 30-year-old, who is a part-time PE teacher in Woking, was one of Britain's few heroes as she finished third in her final in the Stade de France yesterday.

Then she revealed how she went "back to basics" in a bid to try and regain the form which saw her reach the 1,500m final at the Sydney Olympics three years ago.

"I have been trying to get back to where I was in 2000 when I ran well in Sydney," explained Tullett.

"Things didn't happen for me in 2001 although after the World Championships in Edmonton I found out I was slightly anaemic, and then 2002 went completely wrong.

"I talked it over with my coach, Mark Rowland, and we decided to get back to basics and follow the same plan which worked for me in Sydney. I did a lot of three-kilometre and cross-country running in the winter and it has made me stronger.

"I was beginning to ask myself whether I'd had my best days and decided that I would only carry on next year if this year went well.

"I am not a slacker and it is no fun training and putting your heart into it and then running like the way I did last year, so I did think about retiring from competition."

If Tullett is to reproduce her Paris success at next year's Olympics then she had better work out a celebration routine.

She was so shocked at taking the bronze in a personal best time of three minutes 59.95 seconds that she did not know how to react when she crossed the line.

"I didn't think I saw it correctly when I crossed the line," said Tullett. "I had to wait for the result to appear on the giant screen and then watch the replay before it began to sink in.

"I didn't know how to react and said to myself: 'What do I do? Do I run round the track? No, I haven't won'. So I just walked off and started giving some bad interviews.

"If I had been expected to get a medal or I was someone who had won lots of medals before it might have been different, but that isn't me."

Another athlete hoping he will have something to celebrate in Athens is Steve Backley, who failed in his quest to win a first World Championship javelin title.

"My main objective is Athens in 12 months," said Cambridge's Backley, who finished outside the medals.

"I trained harder this winter than ever before but didn't start throwing until late, so next season I will be starting very early - it will be 12 months of throwing."

Britain also missed out on gold in the men's 4x100m relay after being beaten by a strong United States team despite them missing Maurice Greene and Tim Montgomery.

That meant Dwain Chambers, Darren Campbell, Marlon Devonish and Christian Malcolm settled for silver, and Malcolm predicts several years to come of exciting duels with their rivals.

"That was the future best American team against the future best British team and we will be fighting it out over the next five or six years or more," said Malcolm. "Greene and Montgomery won't get back into their team."