You’ve probably seen it many times already - and like me you’ve probably been annoyed at how it has been run deliberately out-of-sync. So trendy it hurts. I’m talking about the TV car advert which, with Yoko Ono’s blessing, features her late husband on the subject of revisiting the past.

Putting aside the morality - or venality - of John Lennon being put to work for the motor industry, what he has to say is delivered with characteristic liveliness and panache. "Looking backwards for inspiration, copying the past," says the poignantly youthful ex-Beatle. "How’s that rock’n’roll? Do something of your own. Start something new, you know? Live your lives now. Know what I mean?"

For Lennon that meant, for a while, staying home in his New York apartment and making bread. Royalties are a beautiful thing, to be sure. But Lennon couldn’t settle for that. He returned to what defined him, music, before his awful rendezvous in that same apartment lobby with a deranged man and a gun.

It would be interesting to know what Tim Brabants, Greg Searle and Jason Queally make of that advert, assuming they have seen it. (And you’d have to be pretty firmly out of circulation not to have done so).

All three Britons reached the pinnacle of their sporting endeavours by winning Olympic gold medals. All three retired with grace. And in the space of the last few months, all three have unretired, eager to put their minds and bodies to the ultimate test once again.

"Start something new, you know? Live your lives now. Know what I mean?"

But the thing is, for Brabants, now 33, Searle, 39 this month, and Queally, 39 already, starting again is starting something new.

For the last decade Brabants, who returned to his medical career for the third and, as far as he was concerned, final time after winning kayaking gold and silver at the Beijing Games, has lived what he terms "a kind of double life."

He is rueful about the progress made by his medical school peers, who are approaching consultant status while he remains as a registrar in an A&E ward. And yet his own upward progress has been interrupted once again as he has returned to full-time training on the Thames.

Searle, who took gold with his brother Jonny and cox Garry Herbert in the coxed pairs rowing at the 1992 Barcelona Games, retired after the 2000 Olympics, by which time he had added a bronze to his gold. But after returning to full-time training in January he has reached the semi-finals of official trials, and has been invited to join the British team training camp in Portugal.

"I’m winning races against the high-profile athletes, which is where I am at the moment," he said. "It’s not going to happen overnight; it’s going to take months of hard work because the standard is high and these guys are good."

So the months of hard work are now ensuing…

Meanwhile that other nearly-40-something, the man whose unexpected victory in the 1km time trial at the Dunc Gray Velodrome started the British gold rush at the 2000 Sydney Games, has been included in Britain’s team for this month’s cycling World Championships in Copenhagen.

Since retiring in 2008 after failing to make the Beijing Olympic team, Queally has been competing with the Paralympic team as a tandem pilot. But now he is riding solo again in order to affirm one of the abiding aspirations within sport: I can still do it.

It’s an aspiration that has stirred great competitors throughout the years. Think of Muhummad Ali. Think of Lance Armstrong. Think of Torvill and Dean. Think of Jennifer Capriati. Think, now, of Michael Schumacher.

Once you’ve been up there, it must be impossible not to dream about returning.

How could Brabants not want to be back in a K1 1000 metres race after his experience in Beijing, where he said he knew he was going to win after his first two strokes?

How could Searle not want to reproduce some of the emotional overflow of the Barcelona victory, which engendered those famous tears of Herbert’s on the victory rostrum?

How could Queally, in his own words, "a nine-to-five guy who has found something he is good at",  not want to recapture the rising excitement of that September evening? When he rose in the saddle after crossing the line his face registered disbelief as the display flashed up an Olympic record time. As the three top-seeded riders attempted to better it, Queally performed slow motion cycling around the infield, glancing up occasionally at the scoreboard.

And after the first two had fallen short, he watched his silver turn to gold as the French world record holder, Arnaud Tournant, managed no better than fifth place in the final ride. Cue mobbing, and a run of further cycling medals that energised the whole British team…

There is no secret about what is energising these three Olympians into their risky returns. It’s the fact that the Olympics are only two years’ away. And on home soil.

For British sportsmen and women, London 2012 is irresistible. Is rock’n’roll…

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames