He is unquestionably the ironman of the water, the most focused of men. But only an accident of birth helped make Steve Redgrave into Britain's greatest ever Olympian.

Nobody could deny the 38-year-old Marlow man mountain has dedicated himself to reach a physical, technical and mental peak and then showed the tenacity of the truly majestic by staying there.

Yet Redgrave is the builder's son product of Marlow Comprehensive, ill at ease in the Oxbridge haunts of the bright young things who have traditionally represented the public face of British rowing.

If he had been born 50 miles north or south of the quiet Buckinghamshire town on the banks of the River Thames, it is doubtful he would ever have seen a shell, let alone broken the hearts of so many rival oarsmen across the world.

But he was, he did, and now, with victory in the coxless four alongside Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster and James Cracknell, he has won an incredible fifth successive Olympic rowing gold in Sydney.

Redgrave's achievement is one unrivalled in endurance sport. Only Aladar Gerevich, with six successive golds in the Hungarian sabre team at the beginning of the last century, has achieved more.

He has created a legend that future generations of British rowers - perhaps some from the same modest background as Redgrave himself - will look up to as the strongest of inspirations.

There has certainly been something awesome about the power of his 6ft 4ins frame as he has helped propel a range of craft across the rowing lakes and rivers of the world over the last two decades.

The beginnings were somewhat more modest, as he was introduced to the sport at school by English teacher Francis Smith.

"He was pretty much a natural," recalled Smith. "One of his great things was he could get other people to do things with him. Whatever he did, he was going to be a winner."

And so it proved. By the age of 16, the course was firmly set as he devoted himself to rowing, although originally as a sculler.

The dedication was already there. "Everyone told me I would be world champion and I kind of believed it," he once said. "In 1978 I told my then girlfriend I was going to three Games."

The first was supposed to be in Moscow, which he missed because of a lack of funding.

And only in the build-up to the Los Angeles Games was he persuaded to turn his mind to pulling one blade rather than two as the stroke of the coxless four that edged out the United States to take gold.

Another member of that crew was Andy Holmes and when, after a further year as a specialist sculler, Redgrave teamed up with him again, it was to glorious effect as they became coxed pair world champions.

The following year brought more success, the pair doubling up in the coxless event and winning it while only narrowly surrendering their other crown.

Then came Seoul in 1988, a second Olympic gold for both in the coxless event and a coxed pair bronze, before they parted amid hotly-denied rumours of acrimony.

"We got to Seoul and suddenly came as near to perfection as it's possible to get," said Holmes. "I just got out of the boat and walked away."

Redgrave could have been lost to rowing at that stage. Indeed, he turned from water to ice as he nearly made the British bobsleigh team and, with his new partnership with Simon Berrisford failing to hit the heights, others may have looked elsewhere.

Fortunately for British rowing, along came Pinsent - Eton and Oxford, the son of a rector, just 19, and everything Redgrave was not. A glorious story was just beginning.

They hit it off at once, despite Pinsent's initial fears. "I wasn't keen as it was a chance to screw up," he recalled.

But there were no such problems and, although the scratch pairing took bronze in the world championships in Tasmania in 1990, they realised the potential was there, especially when Jurgen Grobler arrived from East Germany to take charge of their coaching arrangements.

By 1991, their rivals were 10 seconds slower and nothing could stop them. They struck gold again in Barcelona in 1992 - in the coxed pairs with Garry Herbert - and yet again in '96 in the coxless pairs in Atlanta.

After that triumph Regrave famously said: "I hereby give permission to anybody who catches me in a boat again to shoot me."

But Redgrave's enthusiasm was soon rekindled and, despite battling diabetes and debilitating bouts of colitis for the past four years, he, and crew-mates Pinsent, Cracknell and Foster, delivered glorious gold for Britain in Sydney.

Despite his self assurance and experience Redgrave admits he gets as nervous as the next man, and it is a case of overcoming any negative thoughts.

"It always hits me when I'm outside the boat. When I get in it, I'm in my element. I know what I'm doing. I know the score.

"Deep down, you know that when you're in the Olympic final rowing side by side with whoever and there's no way they're going to beat you. That's the frame of mind you must get yourself into."