Emily Craig and Imogen Grant win gold to become the last ever Olympic Champions in the Lightweight Women’s double sculls
With silver for the Men’s pair too, the rowing medal tally for Team GB after Day 7 of the Paris 2024 Olympic Rowing Regatta now stands at six – two of each colour
Photo credit: Steve McArthur / Row360
The GB Lightweight Women’s double sculls (LW2x) executed a race that was perhaps as close to perfection as you can get in rowing to win Team GB’s second rowing gold medal of these Games.
Off the start, the high-rating Romanians shot into a brief early lead, with New Zealand also showing strongly. But soon the British crew’s calm synchronicity on beautifully flat water brought their bows in front. By 500m in, they had established a lead of 0.12 seconds over Romania, and at half way had extended this to nearly a second and were half a length up. After that they continued to pull away and crossed the line to claim victory nearly a length ahead.
The race was the last hurrah for lightweight rowing at the Olympics, meaning Emily and Imogen will be the last Olympic Champions in their boat class. “This was the only result left for us to achieve and we did it,” Imogen said. “I’m feeling all the emotions; joy, disbelief, relief, tiredness, joy again, so much happiness and that feeling of a job well done.”
The expectations on the crew coming into these Games could hardly have been greater. Since missing out on gold in Tokyo 2020 by just 0.5 seconds, and on bronze by a tiny 0.01 seconds, they have won two World and European titles, remaining unbeaten throughout the Paris cycle.
Reflecting on this, Imogen explained: “The loss in Tokyo was part of our story and this Olympics is the grand finale I think. Not every Olympian gets it right on the first try and it wasn’t like we did anything wrong in Tokyo, but we’ve put so much work into this and we are such different and better people this time around that there was a certain inevitability to the racing today, we knew we could do it.”
Emily added: “That was probably the quickest race of our lives and it kind of just happened in a flash. There’s so much muscle memory, the race plan over the past few years has kind of become gospel and speaks to how much we believe in it and how process driven we are that we came out and we lived that process until the end and got the result we wanted.
“There has been pressure but also confidence. Today we knew we didn’t have to go out and pull something new out of thin air, we just had to race the race plan that we have and that’s what saw us over the line first. It’s a bit of a blur to be honest.”
Photo credit: Steve McArthur / Row360
In the Men’s pairs (M2-), Ollie Wynne-Griffith and Tom George took the silver medal. They had led the race throughout until Croatia’s Sinkovic brothers, 2020 and 2016 Olympic Champions, overhauled the British boat with a few strokes to go after a final sprint.
Tom said: “We had the perfect race from the start, pretty much to finish. We just didn’t have the perfect last three strokes – we were done, we were clinging on and we’d given it everything we had. To be that close is really special. The Olympics is a pressure cooker and it’s just the two of us. To be able to put out our best race when it really mattered, we were seriously brave with it especially after not having the perfect semi final. We said what we wanted to do, what we wanted to change and we went out and did that. It hurts a lot not to get the win, but we have a silver medal. We’re incredibly proud and happy with what we’ve achieved together. And doing it all with your best mate is pretty special. I know with a bit of hindsight we’ll be proud of what we achieved.”
Ollie said: “Today I’m really proud that we put that performance out there. We definitely took a risk in the first half, we said we wanted to grab it by the scruff of the neck, and unfortunately came up three strokes short. We wanted to race it like that, race for the gold medal and it’s an Olympic sport. It comes down to margins of seconds. The Croatians – fair play to them.”
Ollie added: “I have really enjoyed the project and the last two weeks being here. It’s a shame it’s not a fairytale ending but I wouldn’t change a bit from the last three years. I’m sure in the next few weeks we’ll look back with an immense amount of pride in what we’ve done.”
Earlier, the Women’s pair (W2-) of Chloe Brew and Rebecca Edwards finished sixth in the B Final, placing them 12th overall. Rebecca said: “We gave it our best shot. In the B Final, every crew in there thought they could’ve made the A Final and everyone went out as if it was an A final. So there’s no shame in that. It was a tight race, we were in and around the action and people were moving all the time. Everyone was really going for it. We’ve come here and done our best, we can walk away with our heads held high.”
The final day of racing at the 2024 Olympic Rowing Regatta will see the GB Women’s and Men’s eights – who both won their heats – in action at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in Paris.
