WHEN Sam Redgrave failed her university exams, the last thing on her mind was a career as an Olympic rower.

No longer a student at the University of East Anglia, Gateshead-born Redgrave got a job as an assistant practitioner at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. Having taken up rowing during her student days, she continued to take to the water in her spare time as a way to unwind. At that point, however, the thought of competing at the Paris Olympics would have been brushed aside as something of a joke.

“I was always very sporty, but when I was younger, I did athletics to quite a good level,” said Redgrave, who was raised in Winlaton prior to heading south. “I didn’t take up rowing until much later – it was actually my second year at uni at Norwich when I first gave it a go.

“I failed university, so I came out of uni, came out of rowing and started working in a hospital. I just rowed while I worked. It wasn’t really competitive at all, but I found a coach at Norwich Rowing Club who was actually coaching my partner at the time, and he just built my confidence back up.

“For a long time, I hadn’t really entertained the thought of elite sport because I don’t think I ever believed I would be good enough to do it. But he persuaded me to trial for GB in 2019. I didn’t make it onto the team, but I got selected for the development squad and at the end of that season, I moved down to Henley to join Leander, one of the big clubs down south. Then, really, it all snowballed from there.”

Redgrave was a training spare for the Tokyo Olympics, but her career has blossomed in the three years since the last Games. She was part of the women’s four crew that were crowned World champions in 2022 and has also won multiple medals at World Cups, European Championships and the Henley Regatta.

However, an injury-hit 2023 season briefly put her place at Paris in doubt, and meant she had to reestablish herself as a candidate for the four, often seen as the flagship boat of the women’s team, at the start of the Olympic season.

“I was hoping to get into the four in 2023, but I had a finger operation earlier on in that year,” said Redgrave. “Coming back from that, I then ended up with back problems, so it just didn’t work out. I was in the eight for a couple of races towards the end of the season, and won a silver at Europeans, but after that, I could never really consistently train.

“I needed to sort out my back, but thankfully I was able to do that before the testing at the start of this season. The testing went well, and fortunately I was able to get back into the four.”

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“There were a lot of ups and downs,” said Redgrave. “I had one of the worst training camps I’ve ever had last year. I just didn’t know what was going on with my body, and really struggled mentally with that.

“There were good people around though, who built me back up and made me remember that I could do it. There’s loads of athletes that have been injured months before the Games and come back, so it was really just a process of trusting everything I was doing.”

Thankfully, all is now well, and Redgrave heads into Paris as part of a four that have justifiably strong hopes of claiming a gold medal. The North-Easterner is joined by two-time gold medallist Helen Glover, who was one of GB’s flagbearers at last night’s Olympic ceremony, as well as returning Olympian Rebecca Shorten and fellow debutant Esme Booth.

Sam Redgrave celebrates World Cup victory with the rest of the women's four crewSam Redgrave celebrates World Cup victory with the rest of the women's four crew (Image: Benedict Tufnell/British Rowing)

The quartet are unbeaten this season, having won gold at successive World Cup events as well as the European Championships.

“With the year we’ve had, it’s all you could really ask for heading into an Olympics,” said Redgrave. “Quite early on, we realised, ‘Okay, this is actually going pretty well’ and had that energy about us to say, ‘Well if someone wants to beat us, they’re going to have to be really, really good’.

“We feel that we’re already punching quite high, but we’ve also got other places to go. It’s been great, and we’ve had some really great races, but we’ve also had races we could learn from as well. It’s very motivating to have that knowledge that even though things have been going well, there’s still lots of ways to make it better.

“We’re in that front-running position, but we know everybody else is after us. That’s just another form of motivation heading into Paris.”

Redgrave and her crew mates can take confidence from their performances so far this season, but the Olympics are the Olympics and there will still be inevitable nerves when they take to the start line for their opening heat tomorrow morning.

“We’ve been telling ourselves all the way through the final training camp that we can’t get carried away with what’s going to be happening in Paris,” she said. “And I still don’t think it’s all fully sunk in yet.

“I don’t think it’s really going to hit until we’re on the water, starting rowing and racing. That’ll be a massive moment, but it’ll also probably help because once we’re rowing, we’re into the rhythm of things and doing what we know we can do. That first race is going to be massive for us – we won’t be thinking beyond that, we need to do our job there before we can start thinking about going deeper into the competition.”