Unknown star who made the A-list

"Well, I was surprised to be nominated, surprised that anyone noticed what I did," said Mudge, after some frantic e-mailing finally tracked her down to Arthur's Pass, up in New Zealand's Southern Alps.

"Of course, had I been at home, I'd have gone and it would have been lovely to have met all these people, but I'd have been completely out of place. What have I got in common with them?"

Nothing, except the extraordinary drive and unquenchable competitive spirit which characterises all the nominees.

When she triumphed in her sport's two major events - the World Mountain Trophy in Germany in September and the Grand Prix series - it was all but ignored back home in Scotland in the build-up to the Olympics and even the one newspaper which hailed her triumph properly could only describe her as 'the forgotten athlete'.

The awards organisers were determined to change all that by offering to pay for her to fly to London and back out to New Zealand again, but Mudge said, no thanks, she didn't want to break her holiday. "That's Angela," smiled her twin sister, Janice. "She doesn't like a fuss. She'd rather people didn't know her at all."

Who knows? Perhaps she would have been as celebrated as the 10 Olympic champions nominated in tonight's track and field categories had she not decided long ago that she was bored rigid by running round in circles on a track.

She may compete in the unheralded outer limits of athletics, but Mudge is a fine runner, a good enough cross-country athlete to have won the British title a couple of years ago.

Yet the woman who trains by pounding up Arthur's Seat - Edinburgh's 800ft volcanic landmark - only really comes alive when she has a gruelling mountain to climb.

"Oh, what I do isn't extreme," she said, noting that she's been nominated in the "adventure and extreme sport" category.

So, racing through a treacherous jungle path for miles up Kinabulu in Borneo, the mountain which once nearly claimed the lives of 10 British soldiers, is not extreme?

And neither is taking on - and sometimes beating - Royal Marines in the 220-mile sailing/running/climbing marathon in Britain's toughest endurance event, the Islands Peaks Race?

Like the best sporting eccentrics, Mudge doesn't see herself as one.

A seemingly eternal student, who has just finished a Phd in chemistry at Edinburgh University, it's all about love not money until one day soon when she will scratch her head and wonder what she'll do for a proper job.

She admitted: "Hill runners don't do it for the prizes. There's very little cash in it. In Scotland, you can be racing to win a first prize of a bottle of whisky."

For winning the exhausting Grand Prix series around central Europe, where her name is rather better known than in Scotland, she earned a princely grand.

She added: "Enough to cover my expenses, because they were minimal - just my tent and food.

"I couldn't have afforded to stay in hotels. For six weeks, I just camped in the valleys and cycled on to the next venue, about 100km at a time."

For a night it would, she conceded, have been fun to have joined the millionaire elite of world sport.

"Well, I think that type of award is a bit out of my league anyway," she pondered.

She was doing herself a disservice. Becks and Lennox can keep their millions.

When it comes to that different breed of British sportsperson who finds reward as much in the adventure as the achievement, Mudge inhabits a league of her own.

www.world-sports-awards.tv