No, no, no. Don't ask him to do this. Not on those wicker chairs. And please, not with one leg raised so godly like that. Save that pose for the Dan from Eastenders shoot.

Show some respect here. Don't take the picture, pal. That's Steve Redgrave in the aperture. Doesn't the aura blind your lens? Hey, don't tell him what to do with his hands. Smile more? Tilt your head just so? Look over towards the food stand? (Caption: Five-time Olympian Steve Redgrave ponders the demise of the modern salad bar).

This is not how it's meant to be. It's just too every day. Bring on the trumpets, the chorus of angels or at least stop clattering those coffee cups. Is invincibility, the summit of human aspiration, simple greatness, not enough to make the world shut up any more? And just one more. Cheers Steve.

"No problem. Thanks a lot."

In this imperfect world, superheroes do mundane things. There is something about Steve Redgrave that makes him inseparable from the still and tortuous waters through which he has carved a genuine legend. For the last quarter of a century, there was a reassurance about the knowledge that he was perennially out there, in the mist, handling an oar, always working, preparing.

Rowing is, for most people, an underground sport but Redgrave's consistency through the decades made him a household name, an image and story worth treasuring.

It wasn't strictly about his winning, his quiet brilliance or dignified accumulation of Olympic gold medals. It was more of a comfort thing, that every fourth September he would be on our TV screens, visored and sculpted and exhausted in his bobbing capsule of a boat and always a champion. He seemed like one of the few still points in an ever-ageing world.

Through Reaganism, the Thatcher years, Tiananmen Square, global warming, the civil war in Rwanda, the Clinton administration and the other quaking events, the boy from Marlow has served as a precious footnote, a stoic emblem of human spirit.

After Sydney, where he had stood on the gold winner's podium for the fifth and final time, someone informed him that more people had been on the moon than had achieved what he had. It is a funny but massively significant little fact. Neil Armstrong is always going to be an astronaut. And Steve Redgrave is a rower, pure and simple. Except that he doesn't row any more.

"It's the thing people always ask me, do I miss the sport and the answer, right now, is no. I have slotted in so easily to other things that not going down to the river each day is no difficulty. Quite the opposite in fact. I was in the south of Spain last week when the crew were preparing to race again and I was thinking of how freezing cold it was in England and realised that I didn't want to be there. And I'm not sure if I will again.

"That feeling may well come at some stage, but for 25 years I did a hell of a lot of rowing."

In those earlier years, Redgrave had a reputation for being a distant sort of hero. He still describes himself as an introvert by nature but concedes that his decades in the spotlight have seen him brush up on his public persona. Time maybe mellowed him a little and knocked the edges of a natural shyness so that now, on the verge of 40, he is disarmingly warm and interested in others, an easy communicator.

"I give motivational talks now without any problem," he agrees.

"But I remember that after my first Olympics (Los Angeles 1984, gold in the coxed fours) there was a reception for me in my home town of Marlow. So I had to speak in public for the first time at the age of 22. And I find it very embarrassing now that it was so difficult for me to say a simple thank you to the gallant people from my own town.

"And now I have two daughters who are in public speaking in their school and play piano at concerts. To think that at 22, I couldn't do it and they do it at seven and nine."

Marlow has a sound to it that suggests that you don't have to visit it to know it. See the village green, pause for a minute by the dulling war memorial. Maybe the butcher, the family greengrocer has survived the onslaught of Sainbury's yet. And like everywhere, the price of the pint rises. It is an unremarkable place, rooted, and it shaped Steve Redgrave.

"I see elements of both parents in myself," he says. "The pigheadedness of my mother, the discipline of my father."

He was always depicted as the working class hero, in classic contrast to his teammate Matthew Pinsent, an old Etonian and Oxford scholar. Neither man has ever come across as even remotely preoccupied by perceived class divisions and both remain pointedly similar in terms of poise, self-possession and manner.

"My dad worked primarily as a builder, he was in construction. My mum worked prior to having children and then she took lessons as a driving instructor and started a business in that. After teaching all three children how to drive, she went and took lessons so she could help fund my rowing."

Redgrave was asked to join the Marlow club by his English department head, Steve Francis. The teacher looked at Redgrave's massive hands and feet and figured he'd be worth tuition. And the rest is gold-embossed history.

"People wonder how it all affected my kids. But to them I was only ever just Dad. My daughter, at nine, has already been on three Olympic gold podiums. It's what she grew up with.

"But the biggest affect has been on my parents. You bring a child into the world and wish the very best for him or her. But you never really expect to see them at the Olympics, let alone win five gold medals or receive a knighthood or get honoured by their country. That has been the strange part for my parents."

And perhaps for himself too. There was never any sense of predestination about this. The closest is the story of his boyhood adulation of Mark Spitz and his stunning tally of seven medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

"The headline I remember is `Spitz for Six', even though he won seven. I remember thinking, yes, I wouldn't mind being up there on a podium with a medal. It did have an affect on me. But then again, I didn't even know what rowing was so it is probably a bit romantic to be talking about myself as a 10-year-old. I also probably dreamed of scoring the winner in the FA Cup final and that hasn't exactly happened."

Instead, he simply responded to his promise. At the age of 16, he was already a borderline A international senior and was told he had a serious future. So began his famous regime. "Control the Controllables" became the mantra. Do everything possible.

And now he has. From Los Angeles through to Sydney, Redgrave was resolute in his refusal to reflect dewily on golden moments past. It is a luxury he occasionally affords himself now, albeit sparsely. He has never watched that last epic race in Penrith at home with a beer. That would be too much like sentimentality.

A few days after the race, he watched it with relatives in Australia who had been unable to secure tickets for the event. "It was with Australian commentary, which, of course, put a different slant on it. And I was surprised how tight it was at times out there."

Only once, at a function, has he seen the British version of his final Olympic row. Mainly, it is, he insists, because he is too busy. His diary is permanently full. Today, he is fronting a Flora drive to lower cholesterol levels. Every other day, he is in training for the London marathon, for which he will wear the number one singlet at the insistence of defending champion, Antonio Pinto.

"In theory it sounds like a fantastic honour," he grins. "In practice, wearing the number one bib will be highly embarrassing. Because it will be very easy to spot and I don't think it is going to be anywhere near the front. And there will be a good few thousand runners out there who will be very happy at not just beating the number one bib, the so-called race favourite, but also a fivetime Olympic champion."

But this is perhaps how he is best captured. If not out on a lonesome river with a winter dawn still forming, then surely this is where we would have him, somewhere in this stream of panting human endeavour, taller and stronger than almost all of the rest, yes, but among them, hurting and striving and succeeding with them. Fighting the odds, going the extra mile.

Because Steve Redgrave has become totemic of the perennial uphill struggle, the human pursuit of happiness or excellence or even peace of mind. To some he is a supreme athlete. To others, he is like them because of his diabetes. Those who suffer from dyslexia see a kindred spirit who has somehow mastered the art of giving speeches in public.

So many see something of him in themselves and they communicate this through the letters, the dozens that arrive through his door every day.

"Some are just really nice letters, people saying, `oh, I knew I ought to have written after your fourth gold so seeing as you got five, I had to write this'.

"Now that I have set up a charity in my name, many people send donations. I get letters from diabetics, simple autograph requests, people just saying thanks. And it's very nice, humbling in a way, to be regarded in this light. Because your own vision of yourself never quite adds up to how others might see you. I mean, purely in a sporting sense, I have lost a lot of races over the years but feel as if I won the ones that mattered."

After he stepped down from the Olympic rostrum in Sydney, he checked out of the athletes' village with his wife Ann, a key figure in his success. "Our parents were minding the kids and were going back after the race. So we had to leave immediately to be with the children."

Once they left, they forfeited access to other events and spent the remainder of the games as a regular family, buying tickets to see the Williams sisters win the tennis doubles and for the finals of the women's gymnastics.

"Things that we thought would interest the girls," he says. "Although Ann got a ticket to the athletics one night and I stayed home while she went along to see that."

Funny to think of the 100,000 people filing out to Homebush for those epic nights in the stadium while the indelible hero of the 2000 Games was everywhere, in amongst the people. He was the guy queuing up at the ice-cream kiosk, the huge guy taking his seat in the tennis stand, the tanned guy whose brown eyes and calm expression was familiar. The guy watching the highlights in the apartment next door.

But most people wouldn't have believed it because experience has taught us that modern heroes aren't so touchable, so every day. Moonwalkers, after all, do not move through crowds.