I have barely had a moment to myself since returning to Britain after a fabulous fortnight in Beijing. As part of the most successful sport in an astoundingly successful Games for Team GB, it was inevitable that everyone would want to speak to me. Not that I am complaining. It is wonderful for cycling in this country that so many people were watching what we did and were inspired by it.

There were a lot of highlights at the Olympics. Event after event ended with a British cyclist on the podium, usually at the top of it. I almost lost count of how many times the Union Jack was raised. The atmosphere in the team camp was wonderful.

But before all our success in the velodrome, Britain’s cycling Olympics began fantastically with Nicole Cooke’s win in the road race, followed three days later by Emma Pooley’s silver medal in the individual road time-trial, which was an unexpected bonus. That immediately took the pressure off us and just made us hungry to go out and do the same.

The pressure coming into the Olympics was immense and fully justified. After winning nine golds and two silvers in this year’s World Championships in Manchester, everyone was expecting a pile of medals from us in Beijing. We had earned the right to feel under pressure and personally I would far rather have the expectation of victory than to go into a major games having to pull something out of the bag, as the Aussies did in China.

But we knew that while you can say that you will win so many medals, like in most sports anything could suddenly go wrong. You can prepare to the best of your ability, but your rivals can produce an even better performance.

If there was a turning point for me, a moment when I knew that things would be OK, it was after we broke the world record in the qualification round of the team sprint. We had come second in the World Championships in this event, but our team of Jamie Staff, Jason Kenny and myself felt confident and when we broke the record we cycled past the French team, the world champions, who were preparing to go in their race. I caught the eye of one and he looked beaten. We had won before we even raced: in the final we beat France by half a second.

And so the medals kept on coming: Bradley Wiggins in the individual and team pursuits; Rebecca Romero and Victoria Pendleton in the pursuit and sprint; a couple more medals for me . . . In the 11 track events, we came first and second in three of them and won 12 medals in total – nine more than the next best country. It was a great team effort.

This success was carried on by our Paralympic cycling team, who won 20 medals – 16 of them gold – with Darren Kenny outshining my three golds with four of his own and a silver. The Paralympics team have been integrated into our set-up, with the same planning, preparation and support. We are all so well prepared and looked after that all we have to do is get on our bikes. There is no reason why other sports can’t follow the same model and fully involve the Paralympic athletes with the Olympians.

Because we started fairly late into the Olympics, I saw very little of the other sports live. I went to watch the BMX and the diving and caught up on each day’s highlights on TV.

It was a great honour and a huge personal highlight of the Games to be asked to carry the flag at the closing ceremony. It was not like in Atlanta in 1996 when we only had one gold medal. In Beijing there were so many outstanding athletes who could have been asked to take the flag.

We had not attended the opening ceremony, so my breath was taken away by walking out before 90,000. And to be involved in the handover with David Beckham and Jimmy Page was brilliant.

There is no doubt that I will be there in 2012, barring an injury. I will have the same motivation and drive and have always enjoyed putting in the hard work and preparation. The rewards are worth it.