Kathryn Twyman is taking a DPhil in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry and is in her third year at Merton. She won gold in the World Championships in Slovenia in 2011. The interview below took place earlier this year.
I hope to represent Great Britain in the lightweight women’s double sculls at London 2012. I will need to be one of the top two British lightweight women in order to be selected. There were seven of us representing Great Britain at the World Championships this year in the Single, Double, and Quadruple Scull events, so competition will be fierce for those top two seats.
I grew up playing football, but I tore my anterior cruciate ligament in my knee when I was eighteen. Rowing was one of the few physical activities I was allowed to do in the first year of recovery. So I joined the other first years at university who were learning to row on the novice team, and ended up continuing to row for the duration of my undergraduate degree.
Time, travel, and cost are challenges I face. I’m one of the few members of the national team that does not receive any funding because of the limited number of Olympic seats for lightweight women. You don’t need much to row apart from a boat and blades; but a boat and blades are quite expensive! It is necessary to own your own boat because much of the training, and an important part of selection, is done in singles. Fortunately the costs of competing in international competitions, including travel, are covered. This is not always the case for other countries or sports.
Trying to balance my DPhil with training is difficult and requires some flexibility. I do a variety of training sessions throughout the week: water sessions in my single and crew boats, ergos (rowing machines), weights, and cross-training (running, biking etc). At the moment I usually have thirteen sessions each week.
I usually do my water sessions in the morning at Wallingford (my home club) or Caversham (the national rowing centre near Reading), and do my land sessions in the evening back in Oxford so that I can be in lab during the day.
Travelling to Wallingford and Reading every day can be a bit tricky, especially as I don’t have a car, or even a license. This is something I’m attempting to remedy at the moment, but it involves time and money which are challenges I already face. So I car pool, take the bus or train, and very occasionally cycle. The one – perhaps only – good thing about the commute is that I can read for enjoyment without feeling too guilty that I should be doing something else.
This year was my first time at the World Championships, and a great learning experience. The margin separating the crews at the finish can be incredibly small – we won our heat by a mere 0.08 seconds! There is a lot of pressure, stress and tension that develops during the build-up, and it is important to be able to handle it both as an individual and within your crew. But, you could also feel the energy and excitement building throughout the competition as the best crews from all over the world descended upon Slovenia to fight it out on the water. It’s important to tap into that extra energy, feed off the excitement, and enjoy the competition.
I don’t think there are many kids out there who haven’t watched the Olympics and dreamed of being there one day, if only for a moment. It is exciting being so close to participating, and it seems like a lot of the country is getting excited too. Participating in the Olympics has only become a real possibility for me in the last year or so. However, selection will be very tough, so I have to keep myself grounded in reality and keep training hard.
