Helen Glover: Sarah Tait’s tragic death has put all my worries into perspective

Magic moment: Sarah Tait shows off her silver medal, alongside gold winners Helen Glover and Heather Stanning
AFP/Getty Images
Helen Glover4 March 2016

I woke up to the sad news yesterday morning that one of my great rivals from London 2012 had died. If you see that picture of Sarah Tait from the last Olympics standing on the podium having just won silver behind Heather Stanning and I, there she is in the absolute prime of her life.

Less than an Olympiad later and tragically she is no longer with us, leaving behind, at the age of 33, a husband and two young children — and that’s just so, so sad.

I tend to make a point of keeping my distance from my rivals and not really making friends, but with her it was simply unavoidable.

She was just one of those people you couldn’t help being friends with and she was very much someone that only adds to my very fond memories from those home Olympics.

It was during her second pregnancy that she found out she had cancer and things looked to be getting better until she had a relapse.

In the past few months it became clear that sadly she was in her final stages. Heather and I made contact with her husband, who’s also a rowing coach, and asked him for the address of the hospice where she was.

We wanted to make sure that we didn’t wait until the inevitable happened and that we gave our love to her, sent her flowers and cards and kept in contact, just so she knew that we were thinking of her on the other side of the world.

For me, what Sarah’s death has done in the past 24 hours or so is make me think about how lucky I am, to be fit and healthy, and to be able to still do this job for a living when such terrible things are happening to other people.

And I’ll always remember her as an incredible athlete, especially the fact that when she won that silver medal in London she was already a mum, and the first Australian rower to have achieved that.

Put it this way, no British woman has ever done that in the history of our sport.

"Sarah was an incredible athlete, especially because when she won silver she was already a mum."

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Take Anna Watkins. She’s an incredible athlete and so strong — and it’s only a few weeks since she pulled out of the Olympic programme for GB Rowing.

I remember when the news about Anna broke last month, I sent her a text and she sent a really lovely message back that she was pleased that she had tried to make the Olympic team and she would always have been left wondering “what if?” had she not tried.

But for me, Anna remains incredibly impressive as the first British rower to have attempted that having been out of the boat for three years, during which time she had two children.

As a mother that’s so, so hard. It’s not like you can bring the kids along, you get in the boat and off you go.

So just to have tried is an amazing success in my eyes.

The past day or so puts things into perspective when you’re fretting about training or about anything else for that matter.

The focus for me is very much on the Olympic trials in a fortnight. I’ve done these trials and, if anything, the nerves get worse the more times as the pressure on Heather and I to win gets greater.

We feel in a good place and on Sunday came back from a training camp in Portugal. Each camp like that follows the same pattern for me. Usually at about four days to go I feel totally cooked and those remaining days are just so painful.

Our coach, Robin Williams, is very good and points out this isn’t a session to get through, this is painful for a purpose and that’s obviously for the Olympics.

When you get through it there is this massive sense of relief, that last night in Portugal everyone goes a bit camp crazy but I’m not entirely sure why as all it means you come home and do it all over again just in a different venue!

Helen Glover is proudly supported by Hayfin Capital Management. For further information go to www.mtc-uk.com or www.hayfin.com

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