Britain’s golden rowers crush the competition… now one of them is off to be a doctor

Olympic gold medallist Imogen Grant will swap her rowing lycra for surgical scrubs in just over a week, when she begins her foundation year as a junior doctor at a hospital in Slough.

Grant and Emily Craig – her partner in the lightweight double sculls – crushed their competition on Friday in a dominant row, finishing 1.72sec (which equates to a length) ahead of the Romanians in second place.

Grant and Craig will now remain Olympic champions in perpetuity, because lightweight rowing is being phased out after Paris, and replaced with the more informal discipline known as “beach sprints”.

Yet Grant – who racks up stunning scores on the ergometer despite her slight 5ft 6in frame – has not ruled out returning for the Los Angeles Games. She chose Wexham Park – an NHS hospital on the north side of Slough – for her foundation year because it leaves her within striking distance of British Rowing’s Caversham base.

“It sounds a bit mad going straight into a job,” Grant, 28, said. “But I also know that the post-Olympic period can be really difficult. And one thing that is comforting is that I have a direction, which I think is protective for my own mental health.”

Does Grant really think she could make it back to the Olympics, despite both the challenges of her profession and the closing of the lightweight window?

“I trained full-time while doing a medical degree and managed just about to make it to the World Championships the last couple of years,” she replied, with heavy understatement. (She and Craig won both of those World Championships regattas by a margin of more than three seconds.)

“So, I don’t see why I can’t try doing that again with a job. It’s a bit more open-ended, kind of exciting to see what might happen.”

This flawless race tied up a redemption narrative for Craig and Grant. They had been one of six British crews to finish in fourth position at the Tokyo Olympics, and the closest of those six to standing on the podium, having lost out to the Dutch double by a heartbreaking hundredth of a second.

To fuel her motivation for this Olympic cycle, Craig printed out the photograph from the Tokyo finish line at Snappy Snaps and hung it on her living-room wall. The trick seemed to work, because the Tokyo final remains the last time that anyone defeated Grant and Craig in a competitive race. They came into this final on the back of 23 straight victories, and extended that figure to 24 without the slightest fuss.

Asked whether their very success had brought pressure in its wake, Craig replied “Pressure, but also confidence. We knew that today we had to go out and do something that we’ve done multiple times before. We knew we didn’t have to pull something out of thin air.”

These are two phenomenal athletes. Grant and Craig already held the world’s best time (rowing does not talk about world records because of the imponderables of wind and waves) in this event, which is 6min 40.47sec, only three seconds slower than the best time ever recorded in the heavyweight double sculls.

It is a remarkable feat, underlined by the sight of these two conventionally sized athletes standing in the mixed zone and being dwarfed by the Amazonian figures walking past. Rowers in their now-defunct category are not allowed to weigh more than 59kg – or 57kg on average – whereas some of the open-weight rowers tip the scales at 80kg or more.

But the British crew possess both impeccable technique and a remarkable power-to-weight ratio. In effect, they are as superior to the field as Simone Biles is in the gymnastics arena.

Craig could not remember much about this race afterwards, and, indeed, there was not a great deal to say about it, except that the British team moved into the lead at around 200 metres and kept going away from their rivals. Craig did, however, remember her reaction to the national anthem, which was intense.

“Umm, yeah, ugly crying on international television … super!” Craig said ironically. “Every time I’ve thought about the moment [of victory], it’s brought me to tears, and I’ve had to try and not think about the moment for a very long time. Was I surprised that that was my emotion? No.”

Craig, 31, took a call shortly before the ceremony, which turned out to be from an aunt who had previously been an international rowing medallist in her own right. “I’m not entirely sure what she said apart from ‘I’m so proud, you’re our heroes,’ because it was all a little bit much. There’s a lot of people I need to go and visit across the country, and give them all a big hug, before I work out what comes next.”

As with most of the rowers, Craig was not making any predictions as she walked away from the podium. But she has a post-graduate degree in Asian art from the Courtauld Institute, and has spent time working for auction houses in the past, so she has plenty of options. This is a high-powered crew in every sense.

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