“I spend a lot of my days being on a thread that’s very thin — it’s hard, so hard,” Helen Glover says, speaking like any parent of young children.
The difference is the mum-of-three — six-year-old Logan and four-year-old twins, Willow and Kit — has her sights set on a third Olympic title in Paris.
A typical day sounds exhausting. Her husband, the adventurer and TV presenter Steve Backshall is away on a shoot at the time of our interview. Mornings begin early and typically entail dropping her kids at school and nursery before two sessions on the water, followed by weights or Watt bike work at home, before setting off to school pick-up.
From there, it might be swimming or tennis for the kids, then back home for dinner, bath and bedtime, the latter of which begins at seven but sometimes runs to 8.30pm, before collapsing into bed. And the 38-year-old does not think what she is doing is particularly remarkable.
“It’s never-ending, but everything is relentless as parents, no matter whether you have got a busy job or you’re a stay-at-home parent,” she says.
“I’m just throwing another thing into the mix that is maybe a bit more physically exhausting than some other jobs. Some days it runs smoothly, but it doesn’t take much for a child to have a temperature or to forget their shinpads for football, and then the phone call comes.”
Glover is part of the women’s four alongside Esme Booth, Samantha Redgrave and Rebecca Shorten, with the final a week on Thursday.
It is uncharted territory for them, Glover the first British rower to return after giving birth. She is in awe of how adaptable her trio of crew-mates and her coach, James Harris, have been.
“James and my three team-mates have been amazing, as we might start a session late and they say, ‘we’ll change it around for you’,” she says. “I couldn’t have done it without that.
“Not a lot has changed on paper, but the rowers’ and the coaches’ attitude has changed. Now, when people are talking about the future after Paris, some are talking about going off to have a baby. I don’t think many will do that, but I like that it’s more in the conversation.”
Glover knows she has had to be the guinea pig, having first returned in Covid times for the Tokyo Olympics, where she finished fourth. She retired after that, spent more than a year out of the boat and performed the second retirement U-turn of her career.
The return was gradual. First were the trials in November 2022. She did those and won. She also won a trial a month later and has not looked back.
A stickler for statistics, some of her numbers are currently the best she has attained in terms of scores on the rowing machine or weights lifted in the gym. It has proved to her the thought in Rio de Janeiro, where she won a second Olympic gold with Heather Stanning, that she had not peaked as a rower.
“I like proving people wrong and I like to prove myself wrong, well, maybe not wrong, but to surprise myself,” she says.
No Olympic experience has been the same. At London 2012, she began the year relatively unknown, but she and Stanning won all the World Cups and then sealed Olympic gold on home soil. Four years later, they were unbeaten in 55 races, with a huge burden of expectation.
In Tokyo, it was merely a success to make it there in a team which struggled throughout the regatta unlike at more recent Olympics.
For this Olympics, the whole family will be in attendance. Steve and the kids came to Lake Bled for last year’s European Championships and are becoming aware of what mummy does.
I like proving people wrong and I like to prove myself wrong
They join in with core or weights sessions at home and sat with their father as he watched this year’s Europeans. She says: “This is the first season they’ve got it. They like to hear my name on the commentary and spot me in the boat. One of the big things for me coming back is picturing their faces on the finishing line in Paris. What an opportunity, however it goes, to share a big part of my life, which mostly happened before they were born.
“Daddy’s on the TV, too, and they sort of take it in their stride. What daddy does is much cooler, as he’s wrestling crocodiles and swimming with sharks!”
As for what is sufficient in Paris, she says: “I’d love to win a medal. If I do that, no British mum-of-three has ever won an Olympic medal. I want to represent mums and show what we can do. It would be a big difference to come away with a medal.”
