TO go from the top step of the Olympic podium to Afghanistan as a member of the British Army and then to world champion is hardly an orthodox journey but that is the path Heather Stanning has followed over the past three years.
The 30-year-old from Lossiemouth will perhaps always be best known for winning Team GB’s first gold medal of London 2012, along with partner Helen Glover, the pair becoming Britain’s first female Olympic rowing champions.
Last year, Stanning and Glover became world champions for the first time. They will defend their title at the 2015 tournament which begins today in Aiguebelette, France, but for the Scot, the time between becoming Olympic champion and world champion was as far removed from the life of a professional athlete as one could imagine. Stanning is in the Royal Artillery and just a month after winning her Olympic title, returned to her military career. She was posted to Helmand Province in Afghanistan for a six-month tour of duty as a battery operations officer before returning home.
“It was certainly very different from what I’d been doing the year before but it didn’t feel too strange to me because I was working in an environment I was comfortable with, alongside people I knew before I was an Olympic athlete,” she says. “It was a demanding job but it was all about the big picture. Being an athlete and certainly in 2012, a lot of the focus was about me and about the Olympics, so it was nice to have a year when it wasn’t about me as an individual. Instead, it was all about what I could add to the bigger picture rather than me being the centre of attention which I liked.”
On sabbatical from the Army, Stanning seamlessly returned to her sport in the summer of 2013 and there has been no stopping her and Glover. After winning the world title last year, breaking a 12-year-old world record in the process, the pair followed that up by becoming European champions in May and winning gold at two World Cup events. They go into this week’s World Championships on a 27-race winning streak and so are heavy favourites to success- fully defend their title. “We’re pleased with the run we’re on but we’re not dwelling on it and we’re certainly not complacent,” Stanning says. “So far this season everything has gone well and we’ve had a good block of training going into the worlds so we’re happy with everything. We’re feeling good and we’re just looking forward to racing now.”
There is no doubt there is pressure on the pair though; four-time Olympic champion Matthew Pinsent stated this year that he believed the women were “within reach of sporting immortality”. It is not an insignificant claim but Stanning is unflustered by the expectations.
“There is more pressure on us but we don’t look at it like that because we’re just trying to make sure we race a good race,” she says. “I know everyone wants to beat the people who are winning but that just motivates us to row at a better standard every time we race. We’re definitely not the finished product; you always want to find ways to improve. Physiologically we’ve moved on a lot this year, technically we’re tweaking a few things, and next year there will be more areas we can improve on.”
As soon as the World Champion- ships end, Rio 2016 will become Stanning’s focus and she admits she is in a very different position compared to four years ago.
“Helen and I are certainly more confident in the way we row,” she says. “We have a lot more races under our belts so we know how we perform under different conditions and against different opponents and that gives us confidence. We’ve matured as athletes and as a combination and we know what to expect this time. Personal expectations are different compared to four years ago. They’re definitely higher but at the same time, we’re both still as excited about everything as we were a year out from London.”
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