Wife, mother, and a three-time Olympic medallist—though not necessarily in that order! As Helen Glover crossed the finish line and leaned forward, allowing her oars to dangle at her sides, it felt as if a significant burden had been lifted from her, a sensation akin to the soul departing the body.
On either side, there was sheer joy: the victorious Dutch team on the right and the bronze medalists from New Zealand on the left. What emotions flooded her mind? An hour later, with a silver medal hanging around her neck, she still found it hard to articulate. “Very mixed,” she expressed. “On one hand, we were aware of our potential to win, while on the other, we felt we raced as powerfully as we could.”
This was a remarkable boat race: a rigorous trial of physical endurance and mental fortitude, requiring the ability to keep one’s composure while the body experienced sheer agony, where seconds felt like minutes and minutes felt like hours. In the aftermath, the Dutch team mentioned how they drew inspiration from the British comeback victory in the quad sculls, maintaining their calm under tremendous pressure. Just one-sixth of a second decided the race over 2,000 metres after four years of stress and struggle—this is the essence of the beauty and brutality of sport.
For Marloes Oldenburg, seated in the Dutch boat, this race represented her personal journey of recovery and triumph against all odds. Two years prior, she found herself in a hospital in Austria, being asked by a doctor if she wanted to donate her organs in case she didn’t survive the surgery. Oldenburg had sustained a back injury from a biking accident while on holiday.
The surgery took six hours, and it was a month before she could walk again. To this day, she struggles to turn her neck sideways. “For anyone seeking inspiration, break your neck and you can win Olympic gold,” she quipped after the race. Perhaps the more profound lesson here is that rowing seems to attract particularly determined and tenacious individuals. Many of us have a protective voice in our heads that whispers during tough times: “Maybe you shouldn’t do that.” Rowers, however, seem to lack that voice or have learned to overpower it more effectively than most.
Marloes Oldenburg (right) is unable to turn her neck sideways after breaking her back on a holiday bike ride in Austria two years ago.
Photograph: Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock
This story also belongs to Glover, whose return to elite rowing while managing three children under the age of two has garnered much-deserved admiration, yet has also sparked some less-than-helpful discussions. What matters here, and what doesn’t? The label of “supermum” has often felt somewhat dismissive, implying that raising a child is insufficiently commendable unless it comes with an Olympic gold medal to boot.
To her credit, Glover has consistently pushed back against this narrative, resisting the glorification of motherhood that implies returning to work as a parent is somehow extraordinary or deserving of special praise. We face two separate issues: how society discusses motherhood and how it supports mothers. Complimenting from afar is the easy part. Providing working parents with the necessary resources to thrive—yes, several fathers are rumored to be competing at these Games—requires a more nuanced approach that hinges on individuals having choices.
These Games are noteworthy for being the first to include a nursery in the village, although it provides hardly more than toys and soft cushions for parents to interact with their children. Even this small concession arrives 124 years after women were first allowed to participate in the Olympics. The most recent round of UK Sport funding for Olympic and Paralympic athletes amounts to £314 million. Consider the impact if even a portion of that was allocated for on-site childcare for parents during training. How many more new parents might remain in their sports rather than facing impossible choices or abandoning them altogether?
Helen Glover with her children after winning the silver medal. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
“I’ve had to learn to accept imperfection,” Glover stated in an interview this year. Like all working parents, she has faced necessary compromises regarding the quality and depth of her work, family time, sleep, and mental wellbeing. Glover has shouldered these burdens not out of choice, but out of social expectation, which suggests that women with children should put their lives on hold. Regardless of what the future holds for her, one can only hope that those who follow her find the journey a bit more manageable.
