I missed our 10-year anniversary! Well I didnt miss it, the four of us all made contact on the day. However, Id like to mark it here. One weekend in August, 10 years ago in Athens, British Womens Heavyweight rowing made history when every member of the team won an Olympic medal. Something that, despite the gold medals, has not been achieved since. Katherine Grainger and Cath Bishop: Silver in the Pair. Sarah Winkless and Elise Laverick: Bronze in the Double. And Rebecca Romero, Frances Houghton, Debbie Flood and Alison Mowbray: Silver in the Quad. Coached by Paul Thompson, Miles Forbes-Thomas and Mark Banks. People can be very flip about Its Gold or nothing and Second place is just first last but only we can know how long and how hard we had to work and fight for those silver and bronze places and how close you come, so many times, to going home with nothing at all. I hope Gold Medal Flapjack brings back some of that perspective. Eight women, nine Olympic medals (with Katherine’s from the Olympics before), eight degrees (three achieved in this last Olympiad alongside their training), two PhDs, one Masters, one PhD student, one Law student, one professional musician, one diplomat, one teacher, one marketing professional, two fluent foreign linguists, one baker of the world’s best flapjack. Eight women. Show me any such eight women. British rowing had never had eight such women who could stand shoulder to shoulder, and I don’t think it ever will again. It will have more successful Olympians. It will have Gold medals. But I can’t think it will ever have eight women such as stood there that day. There is no such thing as an easy Olympic medal but now there is World Class start talent spotting and early funding, now there are sponsorships and a dedicated 2000m rowing lake and training center at Caversham, now there is real belief from everyone that British rowing women can win Olympic medals and that they should probably be Gold. Now there are women who take just 3 ½ years to go from first getting in a boat to getting an Olympic medal, not 15. But that day the eight of us stood on the shoulders of those women who had gone before, who had just as much talent and worked just as hard but, without a system to support them, never got medals. Just as those women who come after will stand on ours. An amazing time and amazing memories.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:55:02 +0000
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