It was 1992 - the year of the Barcelona Olympics - when Robb, an engaging 20-year-old Liverpudlian, emerged to athletics prominence as an 800 metres runner built along the lines of Steve Ovett rather than Sebastian Coe, both of whose lights had by then officially dimmed.

After the boom years, British middle distance running was experiencing an attritional period, with Steve Cram, Tom McKean and Peter Elliott all struggling with injuries.

But at the British Olympic trials in Birmingham the powerful figure of Robb - 6ft 1in and 11 stone - made a suitably big impression.

Although he had already won the UK title in Sheffield, he arrived at the Alexander Stadium still needing a qualifying time of 1min 46.20sec to have a chance of making his first Olympics.

As the bell went it looked as if the young newcomer would have to wait another four years to compete at the Games as he found himself way off the lead.

In the last 300 metres, however, he came from seventh to first, despite having to step virtually in the fourth lane as he overtook the field coming into the final straight. His time of 1:45.16 took nearly a second-and-a-half off his previous best.

Barcelona booked. And there was no tortured analysis. "I gave it some stick in the back straight," he said in his lilting Liverpudlian accent. "I had to go, really. I didn't want to watch the Olympics on TV."

Robb carried that attitude forward to the 1992 Olympics, where he made the final and gave it some more stick, eventually finishing sixth.

A year later his career reached what would turn out to be its high point as he missed an 800m medal by one place at the World Championships in Stuttgart after clocking 1:45.05 in his semi-final. By the end of the season he had a personal best of 1:44.96, set in Berlin.

But already Robb was beginning to suffer from the Achilles tendon and knee problems that would wipe out or undermine so many future seasons for him.

In 1989 Robb's father, Alex, had bet his son would win the 1996 Olympic 1500 metres title - at odds that meant he would stand to win £100,000 ($126,000/€114,000)  if it came to pass.

Despite all the injuries Robb did make it to the 1996 Atlanta Games, but it was once again at 800m and he bowed out in the semi-finals.

What can never be proven with regard to Robb is how much more successful, how much less injury-prone he might have been had he not dedicated himself to balancing athletics with a medical career.

His choice of vocation had been strongly influenced by the fact that he had come close to death on three occasions.

As a three-year- old suffering from meningitis, his heart stopped beating temporarily. And twice his commitment to the fortunes of Liverpool Football Club has involved him in trauma.

He and his family witnessed at close quarters the deaths of crushed Italian supporters before the 1985 European Cup final and, in 1989, he was pinned against one of the barriers on the Leppings Lane terrace as 95 fellow Liverpool fans were crushed to death at the FA Cup semi-final.

"If I'd been nearer the front, that probably would have been it," he said. "I'd always had an inkling to do medicine. But after Hillsborough I thought, this is the thing for me to do."

His attitude to the dual-lifestyle was sanguine enough in 1992, when he made it clear he had enjoyed combining medical studies and athletics, even though that mix had become increasingly impractical since the days of Roger Bannister. "It's best not to rely too much on one thing," he said. "You can end up being obsessed with athletics and coming back from training saying, 'Why wasn't I point-two seconds faster than last time?'"

If it ever came to a choice between his two lives, he insisted, it would be the running which would go.

Shortly before the 1993 World Championships Robb spoke to me about how the work/run balance was working out as he sought to combine training and competing with being a medical student working at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.

"It's not so much the training that is difficult," he said, "it's afterwards, when you feel tired and don't want to look at a book."

By this point many in athletics were questioning the feasibility of what Robb was attempting.

"They do think I'm a bit mad," he said. "A lot of people have said, 'Pack it in.'"

The pressure to give up a dual medical career - as 400m runner Roger Black had some years earlier, to dramatically successful effect -  had been intense. Among those who had urged Robb to concentrate on his running was Britain's head of coaching, Frank Dick, who told him he would be a better athlete for it.

Robb was unmoved. "I think the general consensus among athletes is that they want a part-time job with flexible hours. Some athletes don't even want that because they want to concentrate on their training. I tried that when I had a year out. But I got a bit bored, to be honest."

Shortly after the publication of a piece in which he talked in detail about his medical and athletic balancing act I got a postcard sent on from The Independent from the Robb family: "Thanks for the article on our little toerag!"

Post-Atlanta 1996, as Robb plugged on with his medical career, the injuries became more numerous and intractable and his track career waned to the point of invisibility. Or almost.

In 2002, shortly before the Manchester Commonwealth Games began, the British media were invited to Trafford Park stadium to chat with selected England athletes.

Of whom Curtis Robb was not one.

But once there I spotted an athlete sitting quietly on a bench watching the press activity. The ginger hair that was just beginning to recede in 1993 was shorn, but the face beneath it retained all its humour and intelligence. It was Curtis.

At the age of 30, he described himself as entering the twilight years of his athletics career. Those all too familiar injuries had prevented him running for 32 months before he had managed a couple of comeback races in May of that year.

A few weeks later, against all expectation, he had finished third in the Manchester trials to earn his first appearance at a Commonwealth Games.

At that point he was a trainee surgeon at Sheffield's Northern General Hospital, set on a career path that he hoped would see him become a registrar and then a consultant specialising in orthopaedics, a process that could take him another decade. In medical terms, then, Robb - who was working an average 72-hour week as a senior house officer - was still an up-and-coming talent.

"I deal with people who come in after car accidents or who have suffered severe burns," he said as he gazed out on an infield of Lottery-supported colleagues whose lives must have seemed drastically different to his own.

"If I didn't have a medical career I would be entering the twilight years of my athletics and wondering about what road in life I would have to start on now. If anything medicine means more to me now than it did when I began."

The absurd working patterns to which he had to conform - when on call he could go 36 hours without sleeping - meant that training had to be fitted in where possible. Robb travelled over to the Don Valley stadium at odd hours of the day and night. If it was shut, Alf Tupper moved on to the nearby Woodburn Stadium.

"You can jump over the fence there," he said with a grin. "I love training. It hasn't been a chore over the years because there's nothing I'd rather do. I'd rather do a good training session than have 10 pints of lager.

“You struggle, struggle for five, six months with injury, but when you get your speed back it's almost like you suddenly click into something. It's like defying the laws of physics and biology."

Robb's last hurrah saw him miss the semi-finals by one place.

Now, at 50, he is a fully qualified surgeon; the podium on which he was destined to stand.