Grainger on Olympics

With the Beijing Olympics looming large on the sporting horizon, Katherine Grainger’s preparations are moving into top gear.

This week Grainger and her Marlow-based squad left for an Olympic training camp in Varese northern Italy with just one target in mind – Olympic gold.

Grainger, who won an Olympic silver medal with Catherine Bishop in 2004, has never tasted the ultimate Olympic glory before, and it has only heightened her ambition to revisit the height of sporting ambition.

Beijing will be Grainger’s third and possibly last Olympics, and after an astonishingly successful 2007 her crew of Annie Vernon, Debbie Flood and Frances Houghton are ready to do it all again.

“The Olympic experience is hard to put into words,” she said. “It is the fulfilment of a lifetime’s dream. The immense feeling of satisfaction is that you have put yourself through the mill to get there, missed out on family things, sacrificed so much for it - but you got there.”

Grainger won her fourth successive world title in Munich last year and the quad was named women’s crew of the year by Fisa, the world governing body, but she wants Olympic gold.

Training begins in earnest this week, and she admits she loves training in Varese.

She said: “It’s a wonderful place to row, has a snowy backdrop and the greatest ice-cream in the world, which swings it for me.”

But however relaxed she may pretend to be it is clear Grainger is feeling the pressure to deliver this time around.

“Eight years ago, I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said, “but now, I feel some responsibility and know so much more.

“It is a huge pressure to feel a country’s expectations on your shoulders, but to be honest the pressure we put upon ourselves is even greater.”