SIR STEVE REDGRAVE: I thought the National Lottery would make little change to Team GB's success... I was shocked by the dramatic difference it has made

Only winning one gold medal at Atlanta 1996 was the moment that changed everything. In the media and in the eyes of the Government, it was a disaster. The Prime Minister, John Major, was adamant that something needed to be done about it.

There were all sorts of different discussions, which I was involved in, including talk of copying the Australians by setting up sport academies.

But we were already 10 to 15 years behind the curve. We had to look at how we could make an impact relatively quickly, supporting the next generation coming through and setting up systems for the long term.

That is when The National Lottery came on board with funding and it has been transformational, from winning just one gold at Atlanta 1996 – through myself and Matthew Pinsent – to 22 golds last time out in Tokyo.

I thought The National Lottery would make a little bit of a change first up, but I did not think it would make the dramatic difference it has.

We thought we trained like professionals when we were amateurs. But when I was younger, I did some work as a landscape gardener, going around cutting people's lawns and laying turf, just to help fund my rowing.

My mother taught me and my sisters how to drive and then ended up becoming a driving instructor to earn extra money for my rowing. I wouldn't have been able to continue without that.

Even to be able to compete at international regattas or World Championships, we had to find our own funding. We had to pay to be able to represent our country. Now, thanks to people playing The National Lottery, it's the other way round.

This transformational support has taken away any worries athletes might have had about how they are going to put food on their plate, or how they are going to put fuel into their car to be able to get to training or races. We receive coaching, world class venues to train in and it gives us such support to compete on the global stage.

I always remember when our men's eight shocked everybody, including me, by taking the gold at Sydney 2000 having failed to make the final at Atlanta. The single factor you can put that down to was having more money. They were no longer thinking, 'How am I going to put food on the table? How am I going to train alongside my part-time job?'. They could concentrate more on just getting the best result they possibly could. From then on, the medals kept flowing.

In rowing, we won 12 medals in the six Games from 1976 to 1996, with five golds – four of them which I had a slight involvement in. In the six Olympics since National Lottery funding kicked in, we have won 29 medals, 12 of them gold.

I remember being at Athens 2004 with the BBC after retiring, and I was still in this mindset that we only win less than a handful of medals in rowing. But every athlete I interviewed was saying they had a great chance to win a medal. Attitudes had changed. They all had belief.

I was thinking, 'There's no way they'll be able to do that', but they came away with six medals. Then at London 2012, we won a record nine.

In Paris, we have qualified 10 out of 14 boats and all of them believe that they are going to win a medal. We are expecting big things - and there is also a lot of talent coming through. None of this would have been possible without National Lottery investment.

Last year in the men's eight, we won the Junior World Championships, the Under-23 World Championships and the senior World Championships. I don't know of a country that has ever had that sort of production line success apart from East Germany in the early part of my career.

I never dreamed that we would be consistently ahead of Germany on the medal table across the board.

You can hear from Steve at Mail Online in our exclusive video series every day of the Olympic Games.

National Lottery players raise more than £30M a week for Good Causes and support our Olympic & Paralympic athletes to live their dreams and make the nation proud. For details visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk.