- The 35-year-old and Polly Swann finish fourth in women’s pair
- Two-time gold medallist Glover only made comeback in January
Usain Bolt redefined what’s possible by running the 100m in 9.69sec, Nadia Comaneci did it by scoring perfect 10s, Michael Phelps by winning eight gold medals at one Olympic Games. And at the Sea Forest Waterway on Thursday morning, British rower Helen Glover did it by finishing fourth in the women’s pair with her partner, Polly Swann. Fourth, of course, is the worst place to be, the one position no one wants to end up in, and it would be a lie to say Glover, who won gold at London 2012 and Rio 2016, dreamed of being there herself this time around. It wasn’t the fairytale finish. But then this wasn’t a fairytale story.
It was a story about what people can do, not what they can dream about doing. Glover, 35, has three children under five, the youngest of them a pair of twins who were born in January 2020. She only decided to try and make her comeback in January this year, a decision she’s described as “a lockdown project that’s gone too far”. There are people out there who might say that because they started making sourdough and ended up buying a breadmaker, and plenty more with kids the same sort of age as Glover’s who would consider anything more than making it through the News at 10 without falling asleep on the sofa to be ludicrously over-ambitious.
