British badminton star Gail Emms won an Olympic silver medal with mixed doubles partner Nathan Robertson at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Over the coming months on 606, the 30-year-old will be providing regular insights into her preparations for the Bejing Games.

It's been a scary few weeks with Nathan having an operation on his injured ankle.

He's had a problem for one-and-a-half years now and we've been competing through it.

To be fair, we've actually done pretty well despite him having one good ankle and one bad but things came to a head at the European Championships in April.

He couldn't travel out with the team because his ankle was swollen and then we lost in the semi-finals which was a disappointment as really we should have won it.

So we had to make a decision of what we were going to do.

As a team, with the coaches and medical staff, we thought an operation would be the best thing to do and thankfully the brilliant surgeon cleared out his ankle and Nathan was walking in two days – so all is looking good.

If they had found something serious, that would have been the end of his Olympic chances.

It was a nervy few days waiting for the operation and the results, but when I heard all was fine, and that the surgeon was happy, I felt so relieved.

Nathan's not back in full training yet - he's doing light stuff on court this week.

It's unfair because the rest of us have been working so hard that we can barely move our legs and we are so tired while he's just walking in every day and saying hello!

We're looking at him with pure evil stares while we're crawling on the floor, but his time will come! I'm going to make him work as hard as we did.

Beijing will be totally different to Athens in its own unique way.

Athens was my first Olympics and my first medal in a major event so it was a new experience.

But now I'm going to the Olympics with a World Championship title and Commonwealth gold medal under my belt so I'm a bit wiser in experience and I know what to expect.

I want to win a gold medal, but any medal would be great to be honest.

The last 18 months hasn't been the best performance-wise because of Nathan’s injury, but I want us to go out there and play well because I know when we play well we can beat anyone.

The Chinese will be favourites, but there are probably about eight pairs in with a chance.

Fellow Brits Donna Kellogg and Anthony Clark are in a position to win a medal – they’ve had a bit of an up-and-down year, but they won world silver in 2006 (we beat them in the final) and they won the European Championships last month.

There is a possibility of me and Nathan meeting them in the final in Beijing. That would be really strange though, like the European Champions League match on Wednesday.

It's like you’ve done all this work and you end up meet two Brits in the final - it would be weird, but good!

I'm also playing in the women's doubles with Donna.

It's a 50/50 focus in training, but me, Donna, Nathan and Clarkey all work as a four so no matter what we're doing in the mixed doubles, it will be working towards the women's doubles as well.

I won't be more focused on one event than the other in Beijing though - once I step onto the court it doesn't matter which event I'm playing, I put everything into it.

We're leaving for the holding camp in Macau on 28 July and will spend a week there before going on to Beijing, but I'll hopefully be back with an update before then.

Gail Emms was talking to BBC Sport's Peter Scrivener. She is just one of the 2008 Olympians and 2012 hopefuls appearing regularly on 606. Find out more.