by As a junior doctor, Imogen Grant has a high tolerance for unhappy people. Hospitals are their safe space. But put her in a public gym and her stress levels spike.
The explanation? Mansplaining.
“One of my friends was doing intervals on the ergo [rowing machine],” Grant tells Telegraph Sport, during a break from training at British Rowing’s Caversham headquarters. “Six sets of 500 meters, something like that, with breaks in between. A man came up to her and said, ‘You could go on longer if you didn’t go so hard’.”
Grant and Emily Craig – her partner in the lightweight double sculls – look at each other and smile red. Then they start discussing Georgia Ball’s recent viral video. The one where Ball, a PGA pro from Lancashire, was working on her technique at the range when an unknown male told her she was swinging too slowly.
“I’ve never had anything as bad as that,” says Craig. “But there were instances of unwanted coaching. I’m like, ‘I’m sorry?’ Sometimes I get, ‘What’s your peak performance?’ But I don’t really know how to answer that.”
Grant’s occasional public training sessions usually involve a 60- or 90-minute workout on the ergo – the snail-shaped torture device you usually find behind treadmills – and a steady stream of nosy parkers on the machine next door .
“They’ll sit down, look at my split time, and double their pace for a few minutes trying to match it. Then they go away and the next guy has to try. That’s why I avoid public gyms like the plague. I prefer the atmosphere in a rowing club.”
You can see why Grant – 5ft 6in tall, nine stone – might have a walking gym chest “look the Grann” and wonder why it can’t keep up. But size can be deceiving on the ergo machine, where technique, training and athleticism make up for a lack of heft.
Since the Tokyo Olympics, Britain’s lightweight doubles have entered eight elite events and won eight gold medals. They regularly cover 2000 meters in less than seven minutes.
In search of a cheap laugh, the editors nominated me for the role of the mansplainer today, drawing ire between Grant and Craig. There’s no way I’ll get over all testosterone-y. I’m too busy trying not to slip a disc.
“You’re pushing back up the slide too quickly after you’ve finished the stroke,” says Craig, who is clearly used to instructing novices. “Try to reach forward with your hands first, then arch your back. That’s when you give up your knees.”
Like those restless people at the gym, I’m killing myself trying to keep up with the best in the world. While Grant and Craig are leisurely cruising along at a split time of about two minutes per 500 meters – about 30 seconds slower than they can – I’m puffing and sweating after a few dozen strokes. Luckily, they let me go after seven minutes or so, at which point I’m ready to die barely breathing.
If you add it all up, Craig has probably spent the best part of a year on the ergo since her parents, who are both fitness enthusiasts, took her to the British Indoor Rowing Championships in 2004. She was just having reached 12 at the time. Now 31 years old, she is probably in her final season as a professional (although few are willing to admit it).
After their dominant recent results, Craig and Grant will go into this weekend’s World Cup stakes in Varese, northern Italy, as favourites. This is the build-up to the European Championships in April, which leads to the real focus: the Paris Olympics.
If Craig lacks motivation for the next session, she can only look at her living room wall. Between the World Championship victory certificates hangs a photo of the finish line at the Tokyo Olympics. Craig and Grant were well placed going into the final sprint, but finished fourth by a hundredth of a second, edging out Italy, France and the Netherlands.
“It was bigger than I thought it was going to be,” says Craig of the image, which she printed out at Snappy Snaps. “We came out of the back of Tokyo and I didn’t know if I wanted to continue. But we went through a lot that year, especially with the Covid stuff. The font is a reminder that if we can be that close to gold, where can we take it when we don’t have the added stress?”
Fourth place came as a current theme in Tokyo. Six boats finished in that position, although none of them won, making this the first Olympic rowing berth since 1980 without a British champion.
It was the first in many years to go on without Jurgen Grobler, arguably the greatest Olympic coach in history. Looking on from the sidelines, many observers assumed that British Rowing had gone down the same road as cycling and swimming: a better management approach that led to unnecessarily reduced results.
While Grant subscribes to this theory, painting Tokyo as a regatta of narrow margins and near misses, Craig admits that the new program – brought in by Australian coach Andrew Randell – has surprised her with its intensity. . “If you had told me, four years ago, about the amount of training we are doing now, I would probably have laughed at you. There was one day, soon after Andrew arrived, when I couldn’t get off the sofa. I had to roll it out instead.”
To add an extra wrinkle to the run-up to the Olympics, Paris will be the last stand of light rowing – or perhaps sitting – at the Games. For Los Angeles in 2028, it will be replaced by a more comprehensive discipline of beach sprints, which do not require a rowing lake, and thus find a following in traditionally underrepresented nations such as Tunisia.
“It just means the stakes are a little bit higher,” says Craig, when asked about the dim lights. “You could be Olympic champions forever.”
“It’s kind of bittersweet,” admits Grant. “We both had very positive experiences as light themes, and I wouldn’t have taken up rowing seriously if it wasn’t for that. But there were also stories of people having really bad experiences with body image and weight gain.”
Despite the challenges of competing with much taller women, and the extra commitment of the year she established in Slough hospital, Grant still believes she can hold her place within the British Rowing establishment.
“I’m joking about this place because I don’t intend to stop rowing,” she says. “I trained full time doing a medical degree and managed to reach the World Championships in the last few years. So I don’t see why I can’t try to do that again with a job.”
Craig prefers to keep her post-Paris plans under wraps, even though they seem clear in her head. With a postgraduate degree in Asian art from the Courtauld Institute, from which she learned Japanese, rowing has a reputation as a cerebral sport.
“In the art sector, you’re in or you’re out,” says Craig. “After Tokyo I got a job in an auction house, specialized in coins. I love Asian cuisine, and I would love to be there eventually. But I suspect there will be a few ways to go first.”
As a multilingual high achiever, Craig is likely to work for Sotheby’s or one of its competitors. Wherever she goes, however, her complicated relationship with the ergo will continue.
“It’s an odd one,” she says. “I definitely fell out of love with him for a while. Then I had to reconcile myself to it by locking up, because there was nothing else to do. Now it’s just like that, and it will probably remain a part of my life forever.”
