Lauren Henry inspires pathway athletes at DiSE Camp

Young rowers were thrilled to meet the Olympic champion at a recent National Development Camp in Nottingham

The National Development Camp, held at the National Water Sports Centre at Holme Pierrepont Country Park in Nottingham in September, saw the 2024 Diploma in Sporting Excellence (DiSE) cohort of 20 male and 20 female athletes get together for the first time with the 34 athletes starting their second year on the programme. The young rowers gained valuable water time, and took part in High Quality Land Training screenings as well as education and development sessions.

Since Paris 2024, GB Rowing Team athletes have been travelling all over the country to help inspire the next generation of young rowers by visiting their former rowing clubs, schools, universities and schemes that played a part in their pathway to success. For Lauren Henry, who won gold at the Olympic Games in the Women’s Quadruple Sculls (W4x), the DiSE programme was one of the most important of these opportunities. She captivated the DiSE group with her heartfelt reflections of the journey to Olympic success, and the skills she has taken from DiSE into her career as a senior athlete. In particular, she shared insight into race planning, nutrition, goal setting, injury management and even university choices: all of which are topics covered in the programme.

Lauren explained, “I graduated from the DiSE programme in 2020 and it has been instrumental in getting me where I am today. The main thing I took from the programme is the importance of having a race plan and how that helped me with focusing on the process not the outcome. That has been a key part in being my best self as I’ve moved onto the Senior Team where I’ve been racing against much older and more experienced athletes. It helps me deal with any pressure or expectation and allows me to get into my flow state and execute to the best of my ability. When I won the Women’s single sculls at the GB Senior Trials in 2023, I even had some notes from my race plan stuck on my footplate with a piece of tape, which was something I started doing when I was on DiSE and haven’t stopped since!”

British Rowing Learning, Education and Development Manager Rachel Hooper commented, “Having mentored Lauren as an Under 19 DiSE athlete, it was always evident that she was incredibly skilled at learning from adversity, and returning to camp to share her story will undoubtedly have given a lot of athletes inspiration to draw on in the future. It was an absolute pleasure to see her return as an Olympic Champion, just four years after completing the programme. Lauren is a great example of how the DiSE programme can support athletes from smaller clubs in particular to gain access to the resources and support to ensure they reach their potential.”