Winning an Olympic medal, you would think, would be the greatest honor an athlete can achieve.

But for Japanese runner Yuko Arimori, who has to think twice to remember exactly where her medals are kept, the Olympics are just another meet. Especially now, since turning her illustrious marathon career into a movement for charity.

"The medals are encouraging to look at, but (they are) also things of the past," said Arimori, the first Japanese woman ever to win a marathon medal in the Olympics. "Whether it's the Olympics or another international race, I now see running as something I do for a living.

"I see confident Japanese athletes headed to Salt Lake City and remember how energetic I used to be. I plan on making a comeback but I don't think I'll ever have that kind of vigor again."

Arimori won the silver medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and the bronze in Atlanta four years later. After the Tokyo International Women's Marathon last November, she announced she would take a year off from competitive races and perhaps become a mother.

The 35-year-old Okayama native explained that she made the decision after feeling incapable of maintaining her motivation following a string of unimpressive results.

"I needed to stop myself before I got worn out," she said. "I had no immediate goals like setting a world record or winning an Olympic gold medal, so I had no reason to rush. I just needed a change of environment."

The first athlete given professional status by the Japan Amateur Athletic Federation, Arimori opted to spend this year focusing on volunteer work, something she found interest in after being invited as a guest runner in Cambodia for two straight years.

In 1998, the year she got married, Arimori helped established the Hearts of Gold Foundation and began work as a representative director of the non-profit body, which stages the annual Angkor Wat Half Marathon as well as other sports and charity events to raise funds for land mine victims in Cambodia.

While the organization has given Arimori and her supporters opportunities to provide clinics to impoverished children, manpower shortages have been a constant problem.

"We can't do everything. There's no point in volunteering if the volunteers themselves get stressed," Arimori said. "Only those who can (should) do what they can when they can. That's my motto."

In December, Arimori took a group of former top-level Japanese athletes to Angkor Wat for the annual tour and held a recreational event for about 400 local students and a team of disabled athletes. The event began with participants digging the ground for hours to create a decent field.

"There's a lot more ways to offer help than just giving money," she said. "In fact, in Cambodia, what people really need is not material objects. What they have recently been requesting are educators to teach foreign languages and sports, in particular."

Arimori believes that active Japanese athletes in the prime of their careers have a lot to offer but are not taught how to take action.

But she is certain that sooner or later they will realize there is a limit to what they can do with a career in sports alone.

Arimori, a popular sports panelist, herself thought she had nothing to offer to the world until she made her mark with the guidance of coach Yoshio Koide.

Koide coached Arimori to the Olympic silver and bronze before he gained added fame as the mentor for Naoko Takahashi, who went one better than Arimori with the gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

"He (Koide) said that I may be able to win a medal if I try hard. So I focused on working hard," Arimori said. "But he never said that I would win a gold medal. That I remember very well.

"When I saw her (Takahashi) win the gold, I realized that a person can be trained to believe that she can clinch a gold medal if she is told everyday she can do it. Some people may consider it a jealous remark, but I've never had that experience."

But Arimori is quick to add that the medal color "matters less" because winning a medal never was her top priority in the Olympics, in which she only aimed to perform her best, believing that would open other doors.

"She (Takahashi) was expected to win a gold medal. She was told she would and trained like she would," Arimori said. "Not many people thought I would win a medal. A gold medal was beyond my imagination, and I couldn't even say as a joke that I was aiming for one."

Arimori said she probably will not watch the Salt Lake City Games on television simply because she is not crazy about sports.