Glover ‘definitely’ retires after failing to lift team’s gloom
This time, she insisted, she would not be going back on her decision. Helen Glover, one of Team GB’S alltime greats and British Rowing’s most famous mother, bowed out of the Olympics yesterday with fourth place in the women’s coxless pair alongside her partner Polly Swann.
It was not the fairy-tale ending Glover, 35, would have wanted, or for which she had trained.
Indeed, it was Team GB’S fourth fourth-place finish of what is becoming an increasingly miserable Games. There was soon to be a fifth, with Imogen Grant and Emily Craig missing out on bronze by just one hundredth of a second in the lightweight women’s double scull final.
With only one silver medal in the bag, whatever happens in their two remaining finals today, this now promises to be British Rowing’s least successful Games since the advent of Lottery funding.
Glover, though, could not find anything about which to be negative. Standing on the jetty of the Sea Forest Waterway after her race, the mother of three – the first British rower to compete at an Olympics after giving birth – said she had no regrets. On the contrary, she insisted the journey itself had been the reward and said she hoped her comeback would inspire her children, in years to come, to “take risks and to take chances, with no fear of failure”.
It was an inspiring message, but one would expect nothing less from the extraordinary Glover, a double Olympic gold medallist who retired after Rio 2016, started a family with her husband, the television explorer Steve Backshall, then decided after cracking out the rowing machine during the pandemic that her numbers were quite good and she might as well give it another shot. Glover was breastfeeding her 18-month-old twins until three months ago while simultaneously training for these Games.
Swann’s story was no less inspiring. The 33-year-old was working as a junior doctor during the first wave of the pandemic last year, and will return to work at Borders General Hospital in Melrose in the coming weeks.
“The reward is knowing that we crossed the line giving it our all,” Glover said after a wind-affected final, in which the GB pair finished behind favourites New Zealand, the Russian Olympic Committee and Canada. “The frustration would have been coming away thinking we had more, and we didn’t.
“Had it been a flat-water day, I think we would have expected to come through to the last [podium] place, but it wasn’t and it makes it very hard to challenge in a final sprint. But we still tried, and that’s what’s important, I think.”
Glover tweeted after the final that she now wanted a “teleport machine” so that she could get back home to three-year-old son Logan, and twins Kit and Bo.
Asked whether she had a message for her children, Glover replied: “Whether they remember it or not, they were there from the very first strokes of this journey, and in my mind to the very last strokes.
“I just think my ambition for them, to take away from this, would be in the future to be able to take risks, take chances, with no fear of failure, just excitement about, yes, results, but the journey.”
In an interview with the BBC, she added: “They are sometimes up at this time, so they might be watching it now. I love you so much.
“You have been my inspiration. I never saw myself getting back in a rowing boat until you guys came along. I just want to say, you can do whatever you want to do.
“Trying and failing is no problem, as long as you try. That’s not just for my children, that’s for everyone out there.”
Glover insisted that was “definitely” it for her now.
“Everyone around me keeps saying, ‘No, no, you’ll be back doing the single [scull]!’” she said. “But I definitely don’t see myself doing the single. I’m just looking forward to getting home and having some downtime.”
Swann, standing next to her, laughed. “I’m taking bets on her doing the single.”
She added: “We certainly fought our all to try to get on that podium. I can’t fault our determination for that. We got in the boat together and every day since has been pushing each other to the limit.”
After Craig and Grant’s agonising near-miss, which equated to 5cm over a 2km course, British Rowing will be fervently hoping that one or both of the men’s eight or Vicky Thornley in the single scull will give them something positive to cheer today at the end of a difficult week.