40
In School
The Olympic Experience
A Parent’s View
Last year was a pretty special one for my husband Alan
and I. We had the privilege of having one of our sons
represent Great Britain in what turned out to be the most
amazing sporting spectacle most of us will ever witness,
the London 2012 Olympic Games.
When Rob managed to get selected for the GB rowing
squad back in 2006, with no disrespect intended to him
I think it’s fair to say we were somewhat surprised. With
no great family legacy of sporting achievement, we’d
been fortunate that both our sons enjoyed actively
participating in sport. We’ve done the typical parental
supporting role thing, trotting round the countryside
with the lads, standing on the sidelines of rugby, football,
cricket, badminton, you name it (along with the inevitable
cleaning of kit and mopping of blood) and were delighted
to share in the recounting of tales of derring do. But to
have one of your kids compete at international level? Well,
as I suspect would be the case with a lot of parents, we
really didn’t think that would be us.
Gladly Rob proved us wrong, and we had a happy few
years following the GB rowers around regattas the world.
Thankfully (for the household budget) the international
rowing season is fairly sparse. It consists of 4 events
per year, 3 weekend regattas form the World Cup series,
topped off by the week longWorld Championships. When
time and finance allowed we’d go to each regatta, the
World Championships always being the highlight of the
year’s holidays. (The fact that it normally landed in the
final week of the school summer break kept me distracted
from the impending return to school for a new year)
Up until last year the highlight of our rowing experiences
came in 2010. Rob’s lightweight four (LM4-) crew won
a silver then two gold medals in the World Cup series,
winning it overall. We then had the stomach churning
excitement of seeing them become World Champions
in New Zealand, beating the silver medal boat by 0.07
seconds.
(A brief aside regarding international rowing competition;
To impartial observers it’s a widely held view that the LM4-
normally provides the most exciting race of any regatta
from a racing perspective. Put simply, each rower in the
boat weighs almost exactly the same within a few grams.
which means they have pretty much the same power in
each boat. The differentiation between boats really comes
down to technique and determination. So having 6 boats
tearing down a lake all of which have the same power often
results in blanket finishes, 3, 4 or 5 boats crossing the line
within milliseconds of each other. This isn’t typical of other
events in a regatta. Great to watch if you’re impartial. A
nightmare to go through if you’re a parent)
Each year followed a similar pattern: training and trials
over the winter, selection and crew assignment in April /
May and excitement of racing from May to August. Rob
decided to study for a PhD at the same time as being part
of the squad. This required him to dash back and forth
between London and Caversham on a daily basis, 6 days
a week. I like to think my Mini played no small part in
Rob’s rowing career, providing him with a get out of jail
card when the complexity of the day’s training schedule
demanded that he got from Caversham to Henley to
Bisham (all wrapped in a trip in and out of London). The
benefit to us was that we actually got to see a lot of him as
he trained, and thankfully he’s reasonably communicative,
meaning we heard his view of what was going on, which
made the whole experience even more engaging. Our
fridge certainly knew when Rob was at home. Despite
being a lightweight, their training meant that it was quite
normal for him to be consuming 5000 calories plus per
day.
And so to our preparation for the London 2012 Games.
In late 2011 we received a note from the British Olympic
Association, inviting us, as parents of a potential Olympian,
to register for a roadshowwhich would help prepare us for
the coming experience. (I have to admit thinking it was a
bit odd. Prepare us? We had no intention of participating;
at best we’d sit in the stands, chew fingernails and try to
keep our hearts from overloading) Sounded interesting.
Then ticketing. I remember reading in the press about the
disgrace of all those free tickets going to business, friends
and families and general hangers on. So I’d like to put
the record straight, at least for rowing families. We were
informed that, should Rob be selected, as the family we
would be allowed to buy up to 3 tickets. Buy? Only 3? Oh
