Two-time Olympic champion Helen Glover setting sights on Paris 2024
The world-class rower, who was born in Truro and learnt her craft at the University of Bath, is setting her sights on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
Last updated 9th Jun 2024
Cornwall-born Olympic rowing champion Helen Glover is aiming to go to her fourth Games in Paris next year.
She came out of retirement to compete at Tokyo 2020 following the birth of her three children - but now officially is back and training with the England squad, looking to target further success at next year's Olympics on the other side of the English Channel.
The 36-year-old learnt her trade with the University of Bath - and before that won a scholarship to Street's Millfield school in the early noughties.
She went on to win countless medals since getting into the sport back in 2008 - including taking the coxless pair title alongside Heather Stanning in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.
Her bid for glory in 2024 starts in May with the European Championships in Slovenia, and says her qualification hopes lie on the chance to continue normalising returning mums participating at the top level in their sport.
Helen told the PA News agency: "When I stepped away from Tokyo, I was really proud of the fact that I'd done it, but when I looked back I wondered what had changed for the next person.
"I felt that without pushing the boundary further, wanting more and asking more of myself as an athlete, nothing else was going to happen.
"I feel like we're at a prime time for mothers in sport. There are so many mothers across British sport, not just coming back, but excelling and being better than they have ever been.
"I've always believed that I'm the best mum I can be when I've also got something exciting and challenging outside parenthood. I really feel I'm the most energised mum when that's going on, and, as long as the work-life balance is always tipped in favour of the children, then I'm happy."
Glover said her motivation to look towards Paris was because she took part in the beach rowing World Championships in Wales back in October, and called her husband - naturalist Steve Backshall - the 'catalyst' after he convinced her to give the next Games a shot.
She said: "The decision-making was almost entirely down to my husband's encouragement.
"I never intended to come back and I never actively put anything in place with the intention of keeping going.
"After Tokyo I stepped away, but in the summer I started doing some beach sprint rowing and I was enjoying that challenge. When that came to end, Steve suggested I do the trials and it was almost surprising how welcome those words were to me."
To book her place on the boat, Glover will head to the Europeans and then two World Cups before finally the Belgradian World Championships in September. It'll be there where the Great Britain selection race starts.
She initially decided to embark on a quest to become the first mother to row for Britain at an Olympics as part of what she jokingly described at the time as her "lockdown project that has gone too far".
Glover added: "What Tokyo changed for me was any questioning as to whether it was possible.
"The whole process was so short, there was Covid and I'd just had the twins and I don't think I truly believed it could be done.
"At the end of it all I thought, 'I did it under all those challenges, so why don't I do it properly now?' Before it was about doing something that had never been done before. Now it's about trying to do it in conjunction with being the best mum I can be.
"All this big picture stuff, all this trying to change the face of women in sport, can be quite daunting and quite big.
"Then I think of the simplicity of looking up and seeing my kids in the grandstand and I think this is going to be cool whatever the outcome. They're definitely at the age where they can come out and watch me compete. If they saw it happen, I think it would put everything together."