One of Team GB’s greatest athletes, Dame Katherine Grainger, has become the first female chair of the British Olympic Association in its 119-year history. Grainger, who is the only British woman to win medals at five Olympic Games, beat the BOA’s vice-chair, Annamarie Phelps, in a vote of the organisation’s 46 members on Thursday. She will take over from Hugh Robertson, who has helped lead the organisation since 2012.
It is the latest step in the stellar career of the 49-year-old from Glasgow that began at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and led to one gold and four silvers before she retired from rowing in 2016. Grainger then moved into sports administration as chair at UK Sport, where she relaxed the organisation’s controversial “No Compromise” approach, which had led to some smaller sports, such as wheelchair rugby and badminton, losing all their funding after the 2016 Rio Olympics.
