HELEN glover

Sport, Rowing

1986 -
 
Suggested by Tamsin Gay and Gary Eddy 
 
Tamsin says; “Helen has won multiple rowing events at the highest level. She is inspirational: training hard whilst bringing up 3 small children’”
 
Edited from Wikipedia: Helen Glover is a British professional rower, born in Truro and brought up in Penzance where she attended Humphrey Davey Secondary School and was a good all rounder in sport. Glover studied Sport and Exercise Science at University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, and then a PGCE at University College Plymouth St Mark & St John.
In July 2008, between graduating from UWIC and starting in Plymouth, Glover, at her mother’s suggestion, applied to the Sporting Giants scheme and was placed on GB Rowing Team’s “Start” programme under coach Paul Stannard in Bath, Somerset. Her rowing career took off from there.

Glover was ranked the no.1 female rower in the world, 2015–16 and is a two-time Olympic champion, triple World champion, quintuple World Cup champion and quintuple European champion. She and her partner Heather Stanning were the World, Olympic, World Cup and European record holders, plus the Olympic, World and European champions in the women’s coxless pairs. She has also been a British champion in both women’s fours and quadruple sculls.

In 2016 Helen married TV naturalist Steve Backshall at Piskies Cove in West Cornwall. She retired from rowing to have three children between 2018 and 2020. In 2021 she returned to rowing and in April she regained the European Coxless Pair title with Polly Swann. She and Swann finished fourth in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo where she was the first mother to row for Britain. Glover said “Everyone will remember the year of the pandemic for their own reasons, but for me I’m going to think ‘that was the year that took me to another Olympics’ And that’s bonkers.”

britishrowing.org