News

Posted: August 11, 2016

Katherine Grainger won British rowing's first medal of the Olympic regatta and the last one of her career when, along with partner Vicky Thornley, she took a hard-fought silver in Thursday's double sculls final.

By Grainger's own admission, she and Thornley had the most tortuous route to Rio, missing out on initial selection and only being added to the squad a matter of weeks ago.  This followed a season where the duo had failed to medal and posted some lacklustre performances.  But there was nothing lacklustre about today's race.

The British duo led from the start and kept ahead through till after the 1500 metre mark, with Poland chasing them all the way.  Eventually, Grainger and Thornley could not resist the Polish surge and eventually went down to second place, crossing the line less than a second behind the Polish winners.

This medal came out of the blue given the troubled season the duo have endured and afterwards, although Grainger was wistful about the gold that got away, she was starting to be pleased about the performance.

 "At the start of the regatta, I'd have taken that with both hands.  There were many, many dark days when I never thought we'd get a medal and never thought we'd come out with a medal of any kind" she said.

"Days like this kept me going through the dark days.  I've been to the Olympics before, I know how special it is and how worthwhile it is.  I thought it could work out if we could just make our way through those low times."

She also spoke about the performance, saying, "I'm just very proud of the way Vicky and I have handled everything.  We both knew we were capable of one more outstanding performance and you just hope you can bring it to the Olympic final.  And we brought our best race in that final.  We laid everything on the line and we put ourselves in the best possible position we could.  We just ran out of a little bit of steam at the very end but that was because we had left so much behind us.  The proudest thing for me is that we brought our best race to that final."

With this result Grainger becomes the most successful Female British Olympian, having now won medals at five successive Games.

She also spoke about her future - "my parents weren't sure if coming back was maybe the right thing to do, but they've been so supportive every since I said I would come back.  I think all of us now think that was the right decision, but I think that's enough now.  For the first time in a long time, I won't have to set the alarm tomorrow.  I've had the happiest and the proudest and the hardest days on the water and by the water.  The closest friends I've made are through this sport.  I'll never leave this sport and it'll never leave me."

Earlier Lossiemouth's Heather Stanning and her partner Helen Glover cruised to a comfortable semi-final win, leading from the first stroke to keep both their Olympic title defence and their four-year undefeated record going, and install themselves as favourites for gold in Friday's final.  They led by almost five seconds over the USA at the 1500-metre mark before cruising home.

Afterwards, Stanning said, "the main job was just to get out and get ourselves in the final, and we've done that in the way that we knew we could.  We had a good row today and it's all about getting ourselves back now, rest and recover and get ourselves ready for tomorrow's final.  It's really important that we make sure we fuel up and rest our legs, we haven't got a day in between the final and the semi-final.  We haven't had to push ourselves hard today, so we're in good shape."

Two other Scots were in final action yesterday, with Alan Sinclair from Inverness and his pairs partner Stewart Innes running out of steam in their final, to finish fourth behind the invincible winners new Zealand, while  Angus Groom finished fifth in the men's quadruple sculls final.

After his race, Sinclair said, "I thought we had a good start, we wanted to get ourselves into contention.  I felt like we were making progress but the 75-metres to go mark felt like the 500.  We were still in a medal position but they just came back at us and things just started to tie up.  It's heart-breaking to know we're not good enough - we just mis-timed it."

Friday's finals see Stanning and Glover race to defend their Olympic title, with the British men's four also racing for gold.

Article by Mike Haggerty.Photograph courtesy of Peter Spurrier/Intersport Images

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