‘We row for Britain but guys in the gym still mansplain to us’
Lightweight double sculls duo Imogen Grant and Emily Craig discuss Olympic aims and unsolicited male advice
As a junior doctor, Imogen Grant has a high tolerance for the unpalatable. Hospitals are her safe space. But put her in a public gym and her stress levels spike. The reason? Mansplaining.
“One of my friends was doing intervals on the ergo [rowing machine],” Grant tells Telegraph Sport, during a break from training at British Rowing’s Caversham headquarters. “Six sets of 500 metres, something like that. A guy came up to her and said, ‘You’d be able to keep going for longer if you don’t go so hard’.”
Grant and Emily Craig, her partner in the lightweight double sculls, look at each other and chuckle ruefully. Then they start discussing Georgia Ball’s recent viral video. The one in which Ball, a Professional Golfers’ Association pro from Lancashire, was working on her technique at the range when an unidentified male told her she was swinging too slowly.
“I’ve not had anything as bad as that,” Craig says. “But there have been instances of unsolicited coaching. To which I’m, like, ‘Sorry?’ ”
Grant’s occasional public training sessions usually involve a 60 or 90-minute workout on the ergo – the snail-shaped instrument of torture you usually find behind the treadmills – and a stream of nosy parkers on the next-door machine.
“They’ll sit down, peek over at my split time, and double their speed for a couple of minutes trying to match it. Then they’ll get off and the next guy has a go. I much prefer
‘They’ll sit down, peek over at my split time, and double their speed for a couple of minutes trying to match it’
the atmosphere in a rowing club,” she says.
You can see why a hulking gym bro might “peek over” at Grant – 5ft 6in, 9st – and wonder why he cannot keep up. But size can be deceptive on the ergo machine, where technique, training and athleticism all compensate for a lack of heft.
Since the Tokyo Olympics, Britain’s lightweight double have entered eight elite events and come away with eight gold medals.
Looking for a cheap laugh, my editors have nominated me for the mansplainer’s role, pulling an ergo between Grant and Craig. Not that there is any chance of me coming over all testosterone-y. I am too busy trying not to slip a disc.
“You’re rushing back up the slide too quickly after you’ve finished the stroke,” Craig says.
Like those hapless fellows in the gym, I am killing myself trying to keep pace with the world’s best. Fortunately, they let me off after seven minutes or so, at which point I am ready to pass out while they are barely breathing.
If you add it all up, Craig has probably spent the best part of a year on the ergo since her parents, who were both fitness enthusiasts, took her to the British Rowing Indoor Championships in 2004. She had just turned 12 at the time. Now 31, she is probably in her final season as a professional (although a little coy about admitting it).
After their dominant recent results, Craig and Grant will go into this weekend’s World Cup regatta in Varese, northern Italy, as clear favourites. This is the warm-up for the European Championships this month, which in turn lead into the real focus: the Paris Olympics.
Should Craig ever lack motivation for the next ergo session, she can simply look at her living-room wall and a large photograph of the finish line at the Tokyo Olympics. Craig and Grant ended up fourth by a hundredth of a second.
“We came out of the back of Tokyo and I didn’t know if I wanted to carry on,” Craig says. “But we went through a lot that year, with all the Covid stuff. The print is a reminder that, if we can be so close to gold with all of that, then where can we take it when we’ve not got the extra stresses?”
Fourth place became a running theme in Tokyo. Six boats finished in that position, while none was victorious, making this the first Olympic rowing regatta since 1980 to produce no British champions.
It was also the first for decades without Jurgen Grobler, arguably the greatest Olympic coach in history. Watching from the sidelines, many observers assumed British Rowing had gone down the same road as cycling and swimming: a gentler approach from management leading to diminished results.
While Grant, 28, shrugs off this theory, painting Tokyo as a regatta of small margins, Craig acknowledges that the new programme – introduced by Australian coach Andrew Randell – has surprised her with its rigour. “If you’d told me, four years ago, about the training volumes now, I’d probably have laughed at you. There was one day, after Andrew arrived, when I couldn’t get up from the sofa. I had to roll off it instead,” she said.
To add an extra wrinkle to the Olympic run-in, Paris will represent lightweight rowing’s last stand – or possibly sit – at the Games. For Los Angeles in 2028, it will be replaced by the more inclusive beach sprints, which does not need a rowing lake, so finds a following in traditionally under-represented nations such as Tunisia.
“It does mean the stakes are slightly higher,” Craig says. “You could be Olympic champions for ever.”*