TIME is a precious commodity for Debbie Flood. In her life, barely a minute of it is frittered away. She is unlikely to be found slumped in front of the television, playing computer games or idly loitering.

The Harrogate-born rower certainly fills her days productively. Her commitments in her sport, as she seeks to improve on the Olympic silver medal she won in Athens four years ago, would leave little room for mere mortals to contemplate anything else, but Flood is also pursuing a second career in the prison service, currently going through the selection process.

She devotes herself to her Christian faith and she spends the best part of two hours a day walking her dog. On top of that, she rarely turns down requests for her time.

"I manage to fill my days," she says, with heroic understatement. "I keep myself busy, and I like it that way."

She would not be happy if she had too much time on her hands but more than most people – let alone most people in elite sport – Flood is driven by altruism.

An Olympic medal is a ticket to the lucrative world of corporate motivational speaking but Flood prefers to talk to schoolchildren, for free. She is attracted to the prison service because she wants to help the disadvantaged in society.

"I don't want to bumble through life," explains the 27-year-old. "I want to contribute, make a difference. After Athens, I was asked to go to lots of schools to give motivational talks, and tell them about the Olympics.

"I absolutely loved doing it. I felt that if you can motivate just one kid, then it's worth it.

"I wanted to work with kids. I worked in schools for a bit. When kids were disruptive, they were sent out of the class – quite right, because they were disrupting the others. But I thought, what happens to them?

"That made me think I wanted to work with people that society had given up on – sometimes rightly so, because they had been terrorising neighbourhoods and things like that. If no-one helps, they come out of detention centres and do the same things again. It's particularly hard for juveniles – if you are an adult, you can move away when you come out and change your friends but these kids have to go back to exactly the same environment.

"A lot of people do a really good job with them. It's a really worthwhile thing to do. You can either cope with it or you can't, and I wanted to give it a try. I felt I could. I believe that God put me here to work with kids."

Flood did two days' work experience a week in a juvenile prison for much of last year and recently passed her preliminary wardens' exams. Her plan is to become a full-time warden after the Olympics, fitting her training around her work, but to take a year off to concentrate on rowing ahead of London 2012. Ultimately, she would like to work with offenders on the 'outside' helping to rehabilitate them back into society.

"That's when they most need help," she says.

Her outlook is laudable but all this extracurricular activity could be seen as hampering her chances of getting into the women's foursome for Beijing, let alone winning gold.

Flood does not have the single-mindedness one expects of an elite athlete, especially an elite athlete from a sport where training, practice and discipline are so important. She is clearly not doing everything she possibly can to ensure success on the water.

Her coaches would prefer her to have a bit less going on, although they accept her life outside rowing makes her contented, making her perform better. Flood insists her determination is undiminished, although she realises that she 'over-stretches' herself.

"I'm not very good at saying no to things," she explains. "I do overdo things. I need to work on getting the balance right.

"Has doing the other things dulled my competitive edge? Oh no. I'm definitely one of the most competitive people you'll come across. If someone is better than me, they deserve my place, but I will fight tooth and nail. My Christianity gives me a different perspective but it doesn't stop me being competitive."

There are seven women competing for four places: the best four will be in the quad team – which is seen as the best hope for gold – the next two in the doubles boat and the seventh condemned to a place in the single sculls.

Flood's silver medal from Athens does not make her an automatic selection, and nor would she want it to.

"What you've done in previous years doesn't count," she says. "You've got to prove yourself every year, and everyone is very close. If it was neck and neck, then maybe experience would help, but I've still got to beat the other girls.

"It's a strange environment, because we all train together all year and there is a really good friendship in the squad.

"The quad is the boat that everyone wants to get into. That's the biggest gold medal hope, although the double also has fantastic medal hopes.

"I'm pretty confident: gold is the only aim for the quad."

Rowing, and particularly her Olympic medal, has helped Flood to understand her purpose in life.

"Rowing has given me amazing opportunities to do things, to work with kids," says the Guiseley-raised athlete, who wanted to be a vet as a teenager. "I was brought up in a Christian family and my faith is a massive part of my life. God has led me to this point for the moment but at some point, other doors will open."

She agrees that a gold medal in Beijing would open even more doors.

And after a pause she adds: "Probably too many."


Debbie Flood is part of the Camelot-sponsored Women's Quad who are aiming for gold in Beijing.