OM Helen Glover targets the Paris 2024 Olympics

OM and double Olympic rowing champion, Helen Glover, has announced her surprise comeback with the aim of making history at the Paris Olympic Games next year!  

Helen had no clear intention of continuing towards the Paris games, until her motivation was reignited by her participation in the beach rowing World Championships in Wales in October - where she battled against rough seas and gale force winds before claiming silver! Beach Sprints are the sprint format of coastal rowing that consist of a head-to-head elimination style of racing, with a short sprint along the beach, a 250m row, and a 180-degree turn before rowing back to the beach and sprinting to the finish line.  

In 2021, Helen made an astonishing return to the GB team when she rowed at the Tokyo Olympics after only six months of serious training following four years of retirement, becoming the first mother to row for Great Britain at the Olympics! Helen raced alongside Polly Swann in the women's pairs in Tokyo, with the duo finishing fourth.  

Helen is aiming to make her fourth Team GB appearance in the 2024 Paris Olympics, having come out of retirement following the birth of her three children. When she competed at the postponed Tokyo Games, her twins were one and her son was three, and if she is selected for Paris next year, they will have a better understanding of their mum's achievements. Helen is also driven by her wider aim to prove that mothers of young children can be as successful in their careers as fathers, while paying tribute to the support of her husband, Steve Backshall, the naturalist and television presenter.  

Coming through uncharted territory, with no other mothers to learn from in British rowing, if she achieves her ambition, Helen, who won gold at the Olympics in London 2012 and Rio four years later, would be the first British mother of three children to reach an Olympic podium.  

Helen has been training with the British squad for the past six months and will still face significant hurdles to book her place in a boat for Paris, starting with the Europeans and two World Cups before the World Championships in Belgrade in September, which doubles as the Great Britain selection races.