Determination sees Flood return with hope of gold on Yorkshire Day

Guiseley’s Debbie Flood is a double silver medallist from Athens and Beijing in the quadruple sculls.

At 32 she readily acknowledges that this will be her last Olympic Games.

She has already taken a sabbatical to work as a prison guard, and is actively exploring other avenues for what her future might hold.

But all of that is on the backburner for now as she chases the gold that has so far eluded her.

“I’m just as hungry for it as I was eight years ago,” Flood told the Yorkshire Post this week from the Great Britain rowing team’s camp in Italy.

“To have a home Games is really different.

“To race on your home water, in a big international meet, is something that doesn’t come along very often.

“In my 15 years I’ve only done it once at the world championships in 2006.

“To have a crowd of Brits cheering you on will be inspirational.

“It’s going to be outstanding.

“All the crowd waving flags and roaring you on – it’s going to make a lot of difference.

“It does have the added weight behind it, that’s the danger, but when you’re doing what you do best you don’t consider those aspects of it.

“When I look back on Beijing, when the Chinese crew passed us with 500m to go, I’m sure they got a massive lift from the home crowd.”

Flood will compete in her home Olympics in her favoured quadruple sculls boat after a tumultuous year.

It was typical Yorkshire grit that saw her fight her way back to a place alongside Frances Houghton, Melanie Wilson and Beth Rodford.

“I had to claw my way back into the boat,” says Flood.

“A number of things went wrong for me at the start of the year, one of which was a back injury that I had to have a number of injections for.

“That all delayed my selection and my performances.

“I got an opportunity to race the eight at the World Cup regatta Lucerne and I grabbed it with both hands.

“It was really good to be back racing.

“Then the opportunity to race in the quad sculls came at the last regatta in Munich.

“I know how that boat works, I know the girls, all three of them, I’ve rowed with them at different intervals of my career.

“So it was great to be back and in the nick of time.

“If you’d have offered me a pick of boats when I was struggling at the start of the year, the quad sculls is the one I would have taken.”

It has been an intense few months for Flood, with the pressure of whether she would be selected hanging over her at every race.

But she feels that delivering time and again while under such scrutiny will serve her well at London 2012.

“That’s how I row best, when I’m under that kind of pressure,” she added.

“That’s what I thrive on, I love the pressure of racing.

“I’m a much better rower than I am a trainer.

“The training gives me that motivation to succeed when I race.”

Flood is only nine days away from her first heat on Eton Dorney.

And the women’s quad sculls final is one of the first rowing finals in what will be a busy opening week.

That is scheduled for August 1 – Yorkshire Day – which makes a woman who also had the honour of carrying the Olympic Flame, recently, very proud. Not that winning gold is being taken for granted, particularly in a discipline as open as the quad sculls.

Ukraine and Gremany held sway at the recent World Cup regattas, but Australia, the United States, New Zealand and China cannot be discounted.

“It’s a very tight event,” says Flood. “In the past two Olympics there were two or three boats who were in with a shout of the medals.

“And at the world championships in 2010 we won the gold medal.

“Then a year later we missed out in the semi-final by hundredths of a second and finished seventh overall.

“That’s how close it is.

“I’d say there’s seven crews with realistic hopes of a gold.

“It’s going to be a very difficult Olympics.

“But the four of us have a wealth of experience behind us. It’s about making sure it all comes to fruition on the day.

“A gold medal would be the pinnacle, and as a British rowing team, we train for gold medals and train to be the best in the world.

“But right now we have got to take it one step at a time.

“But with the final being on Yorkshire Day ... what a day to finally win a gold medal that would be.”

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