Or what appeared to be the moment of our failure, can herald the start of what we will become.

For Lisa Forrest, that moment came in the 200-metre backstroke finals of the 1980 Olympic Games.

Lined up in lane 3 against the world’s best – including the steroid-induced East Germans – Forrest fluffed the start, slipping off the rail.

Though her hopes of a gold medal were smashed, she had worked her way back to fifth with 50 metres to go but then faded, all energy gone, finishing depleted and despairing in seventh place.

‘‘At the point I was just 16, just starting to understand who I was, then I had this whomping great humiliating moment,’’ Forrest said.

‘‘That was probably not perfect.’’

Though she was later to win two gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, she was never to compete in another Olympic Games.

While many of us might think becoming an Olympian was achievement enough for one lifetime, for Forrest it proved also to be a millstone.

Retired from the sport at 19, she faced the prospect of being defined by her youth for the rest of her life.

‘‘I was quite used to saying to people in my early 20s, ‘Show me the manual that says that because you swim for Australia as a teenager you must only ever be interested in sport’,’’ Forrest wrote in an email after the interview.

She wrote about the strong desire to be ‘‘something more than a swimmer’’ as the reason why she places such a high value on her careers as a journalist and author.

‘‘If I didn’t pull it off I thought was in danger of becoming the very thing I swore I’d never be – one of those athletes who is still talking about their glory days, decades after they happened,’’ Forrest wrote.

Yet although Forrest admits to as much self-doubt as the rest of us, swimming taught her the ability to put those to one side and to forge ahead, nevertheless.

And forge ahead she has.

A year after captaining the Australian Olympic swim team, she came in the top 10per cent of the state in the HSC.

Then, after retiring from competitive swimming, her good looks, bright personality, flashing smile and motor-mouth made her perfect material for broadcasting – first as a sports commentator and then anything else going.

She moved to Ray Martin’s Midday Show in 1997 as a roving reporter, she travelled to Olympic Games as a commentator, she hosted the Qantas in-flight program, A Current of Air.

After a radio interview with Margaret Throsby she was invited to host the show as a fill-in the following week. She flourished, and later hosted the ABC Radio Evening Show for a couple of years.

So when Forrest decided it was time to become an author, it came as no surprise to anyone (except, perhaps, herself) that she flourished as that too.

Her first novel drew on her strength. Making The Most of It was a coming-of-age story with a swimming backdrop that explored the notion of success.

It was later recommended as a text for high school students.

It was writing, not sport, that taught her the true meaning of that Olympic final.

‘‘Now I see that moment as success, but I didn’t then because swimming is a performance-based pursuit,’’ Forrest said.

‘‘I used that moment when I wrote my first book and that changed everything.’’

When she got letters from her readers, 15-year-old girls, telling her that the book gave them hope when they were low, she discovered true success.

‘‘My gold medal arrived in the mail,’’ she said.

There followed another couple of books for teenagers, before she wrote Boycott, a non-fiction book for adults, where she interviewed almost all the main players (former US President Jimmy Carter declined) in the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games.

‘‘Writing Boycott was great because I realised, ‘How on earth did you think that you were still going to win gold after all those things that you had to overcome?’’’ Forrest said.

Yet though Boycott was well-received, it placed Forrest back as a former swimmer and coincided with something she swore she would never do – have a baby.

Until she met her husband in her mid-30s, and a close friend died of cancer, she was focused on career above all else.

‘‘I had friends who had got pregnant very young and I knew that my life would change,’’ Forrest said.

‘‘I knew I wanted to be around and wouldn’t want to be an absent mother.’’

So this latest book, Inheritance, is a big deal for her. It tells the world that she has a mind as well as a body.

And that, in the words of one of her characters, her mind is her most precious gift.

The idea behind Inheritance came three years ago, after Forrest interviewed author John Flanagan about his phenomenally successful Ranger’s Apprentice series.

Flanagan had started writing to encourage his own son to read, and Forrest believed she might be able to do the same for her Corrimal-based niece, Indi Forrest.

‘‘My little boy, Dexter, was too young at the time so I thought of my niece, Indi,’’ Forrest said.

‘‘She was a reluctant reader at the time and she was in the circus.’’

The book is in the fantasy genre, set around a circus in the ancient world and with a heroine, Tallulah, who is about to start a circus camp in her town of Seacliff.

It tells the story of Tallulah, a girl blessed with special powers, who begins training at the school for the Cirque D’Avenir, before realising that the troupe is not all that it seems...

‘‘I was certainly keen to write a book for girls that incorporated what I always talk about...that it doesn’t matter how gifted or privileged you are, you need a strong mind and a big heart to deal with the ups and downs of life,’’ Forrest said.

‘‘Even if we don’t have a ‘gift’, we are all unique...there’s no point trying to be someone else, she’s already taken as they say.

‘‘Being told you can be anything and everything you want to be is both exciting and overwhelming.

‘‘It takes courage to stay true to yourself and realise your own potential.’’

Forrest visited the National Institute of Circus Arts in Melbourne for research, but it was to her niece’s teacher at Circus Monoxide, that she turned to when the manuscript needed fact-checking. In the acknowledgments, she makes special mention of Jane Davis and her contribution.

‘‘[She] took time away from her newborn baby to offer her expertise,’’ Forrest writes.

‘‘Jane’s Circus Monoxide base, in Fairy Meadow, provided all the inspiration for what a circus space should look like and what Cirque D’Avenir did not when Tallulah first arrived.’’

Davis, a former Circus Monoxide director who still teaches classes, said it was her job to ensure the circus details were accurate.

For Davis, the mix of circus with fantasy is an obvious one.

‘‘I thought it was a fantastic book,’’ she said.

‘‘Tumbling and aerial work is connect with our wish to fly and to have superpowers."

While Indi Forrest, now aged 16, has high praise for the book, she admits it may have failed in its original aim.

‘‘I have only read part of the book,’’ she said.

Lisa Forrest will be one of the guests at the Southern Highlands Writers’ Festival from July 12-14. Details: shwf.com.au.