"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Dreams do come true
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Katherine Grainger, Andre Deutsch Limited 2013. ISBN 978-0-233-00381-8
What a brilliant book! Katherine Grainger gives a gripping and fascinating insight into the world elite sport with reference to her rowing career. She conveys the emotion, the success and failures, the pressure and the ecstasy and the intensity of professional sport. She has a great gift for expressing the inexpressible.
She sums up the essence of Olympic sport poignantly: “Through all the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the tears and laughter, the year ultimately gets defined by about six minutes on the water”. Has anyone ever summed up the essence of the Olympic final better than this: “And when the gun goes there is no stopping, no half-time, no time-out discussions, just one flat-out, lung-bursting, leg-pumping adrenaline rush from start to finish… but I was very aware we had one shot at this”.
How appropriate too were the words of the Whitney Houston song ‘One Moment in Time’ that Katherine listened to on the day of 2012Olympic final: “Each day I live, I want to be, a day to give, the best of me, I’m only one, but not alone, my finest day, is yet unknown. I broke my heart. Fought every gain, to taste the sweet, I face the pain, I rise and fall, fought it all, this much remains. Give me one moment in time. When I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away, and the answers are all up to me.”
Of watching close friend come fourth – and out of the medals – “I had tears in my eyes as it hit home that all the year’s work and training were focused on this one moment. A year is a long time for it to come to this, and for it to be so close and yet so far. It felt cruel”
She describes an early failure in these words: “I realized that this sport was something I cared about deeply and something I wanted to prove to be good at…It was then with complete shock that I took in the fact that I hadn’t even made it into the fourth and final boat. .. I nevertheless turned my tear-streaked face to the heavens and raged against the night sky… I would never put myself in that position again. That position where I felt too confident and possibly even complacent and had completely overrated my abilities. Where I could be humiliated and upset by my own actions. I swore I would never be deselected again. Frankly I did give a damn”.
The public just sees the selected athletes in the boats for the championship, with no clue as to the traumatic dog-eat-dog process which has led to selection- the endless trails and training camp assessments, the anxiety and the uncertainty. Then the outcome – for every delighted rower there is one or more disappointed ones. Katherine expresses the experience with brutal honesty:
“We duly had the trial and Sarah, Frances and Gillian all raced. Gillian won, and so it was decided she would join the quad and Sarah and Frances would become the double. On the training side the professionalism held strong with everyone taking to training in their new boats. Off the water, however, personal damage had been done and would never be healed. The atmosphere was always tense whenever all of us were together…. And so, with this in the air, we flew out to Australia to complete our Olympic preparations.”
She reflects on the medal won in Sydney but asks: “at what cost?” adding “As much as I love and appreciate the professionalism of British Rowing there were times when I struggled with how impersonal it could feel. However, I couldn’t help but like feel that although this organization may be bigger than the individuals , it was great because of those individuals, and somehow it would be good if that was acknowledged”. Her reflections on the politics of team selection and team dynamics are among the books strongest part.
The failure to win gold in Beijing produced a great deal of raw emotion. For those outside the sport it is hard to grasp the sense not just of disappointment but of having let other people down. “Many of my family, my friends, and lots of people who had helped and supported me over the years in my quest for gold had flown out to Beijing in the belief of a golden ending. I could only what a waste of money it must have been for them”. And it does not help when a journalist asks quad how it feels to have wasted four years of your life.
Of course the story came good in 2012 with her gold medal in London but even then there was a bittersweet aspect as the constant attention on Katherine and her gold medal, put pressure on the relationship with Anna with whom she had won gold.
My only reservation is that an index of names or a list of key team-mates would have been useful. I sometimes struggled to remember who Cath, Debbie, Fran, Guin, Sarah, Dot, Anna etc were and where they fitted into the story.
A compelling story told with great honesty.