It’s Katherine the Great as Grainger wins her 5th medal
Grainger and Thornley take silver to make it a fairytale farewell
KATHERINE Grainger was wonderfully economical in her understatement: ‘I don’t like leaving an Olympics without a medal,’ she said after putting British rowing on the board.
For the fifth and final time she is departing with a bauble around her neck, this one her fourth silver to go with the golden exception of London 2012.
It is a sequence that goes all the way back to Sydney’s Millennium jamboree, when Sir Steve Redgrave was finishing off his collection by winning his fifth gold medal.
Grainger becomes the nearest thing British women’s sport has to a Redgrave, and had her double scull not been hunted down, agonisingly, in the last 150 metres then she would have repeated her feat of four years ago with Anna Watkins.
Asked what it felt like, at 40, to be Britain’s most successful female Olympian, she looked almost surprised. ‘I’ve never been that before. It’s unreal, it’s not something you set off to do,’ she said. ‘I started off as a student and at my first Olympic Games, it was just incredible to be selected and to get a medal in Sydney. I continued because I love this sport and I love being in a boat and the passion and the excitement, the pressure of these big Olympic moments.
‘That’s what drives me every day. By following that dream, it’s got me to this place, but I never set out to do it.’
Let us not succumb to Tom Daley syndrome here and forget that she had a partner in all this, Vicky Thornley, who eight years ago was working as a barmaid and parttime model before being spotted by the Sporting Giants talent identification scheme. The 6ft 4in former show jumper was the first graduate of the programme to win a medal — gold at the 2009 Under 23 World Championships — and now, seven years on, has an Olympic silver to add to her collection.
But there was a sense that this was more Grainger’s day. It lit up an otherwise deflating morning for the British team, with no other medals from four finals, meaning they will struggle to meet their target of at least six medals.
For all their pedigree, Grainger and Thornley looked likely noncontributors for much of the year, not even part of the initially named squad after an abortive attempt to win a place in the women’s eight.
There were tensions with the hard-driving Australian coach Paul Thompson, particularly involving Thornley, from the Welsh border country outside Wrexham.
‘I’m not the smoothest drink in the liquor cabinet,’ was how Thompson cheerfully described himself when looking back at the time, as recently as June, when the two rowers reverted to the double scull. ‘It’s brutal out there. You can see the racing and we have to prepare for them to deliver,’ he said yesterday.
‘On the day they didn’t get announced (for the eight) we had a meeting, all three of us, and we all committed to the boat and committed to making it work, and since that point they haven’t put a foot wrong.’
These were among the times that made the prospect of yesterday’s silver the stuff of fantasy.
‘There have been so many hard days in the last year or two when it seemed the furthest thing from reality,’ said Grainger.
‘Two months out it’s not the place you would want to be, with a big momentum thing going into the Olympics.
‘Sport is a very rough, intense environment. We’ve all said and done things that have been tough, but it proves what a great working relationship we have to come out with a result like that.’
She added that the biggest treat in her ‘new dawn’ will not be having to set the alarm clock for a while.
Thornley, crushed after coming only fifth in the women’s eight four years ago, is 29 and will consider her options. ‘I knew I was capable of a performance of Olympic medal standard and it hadn’t quite come out yet,’ she said.
‘It’s been difficult these last few years, not getting anything medalwise. But I wouldn’t change that because this is the one you want.’
They had gone out hard in some slightly bumpy water at the start, and at the 1500m mark were ahead of the Poles by 1.25sec, making it a two-boat race. But the opposition paced their race perfectly and eased past with 150 metres to go, crossing the line half a length ahead.
‘At the start of the regatta we would have taken that with both hands,’ admitted Grainger. ‘But because we led most of the way there is a
3 DIFFERENT events Grainger has won Olympic medals in. Double sculls (2), Quadruple sculls (2), Coxless pair (1).
little tinge of what might have been.’
The sense of glass half-empty was more evident in the other three finals. Genuine medal hopes Alan Sinclair and Stewart Innes came closest with a fourth in the men’s pair while the men’s quad came fifth, as did the men’s double of Jonathan Walton and John Collins.
None of them, though, were as remotely fancied as the two boats going in their finals today, the women’s pair of Helen Glover and Heather Stanning and the flagship men’s four.
Both were imperious in winning their semi-finals yesterday and gold is expected from them today, wind permitting, though the four may be challenged by Australia and the women by Denmark. Single sculler Alan Campbell will also look to make it through his semi-final.
With both eights expected to be in the medals tomorrow, GB should make at least five podium appearances.
As for Grainger, walking off into the sunset armed with the PhD in homicide sentencing she completed during her post-London break, she had done her bit, as always.