Olympic medalist Dr Imogen Grant returns to Trinity for her other medal

Olympic gold medalist Imogen Grant returned to Trinity and collected another medal – this one of plywood and MDF – from around Henry VIII’s neck at Great Gate via a cherry picker and amid cheers from the crowd below.

Dr Grant, now a doctor, joined Senior Carpenter Jon Squires who made the medal to celebrate her Lightweight Double Sculls victory in the Paris Olympics this August.

She told BBC Look East that apart from being larger the Trinity medal was identical to the real thing.

After Dr Grant showed both medals to wellwishers, including members of Trinity’s First & Third Boat Club, she gave a talk for the College community.

She described her first, reluctant, outing during Freshers’ Week, during which a more experienced rower said: ‘You’re picking this up really quickly. I think you could be good at this.’

‘That’s always really stuck with me,’ Dr Grant told the audience, going on to describe how things ‘spiraled quite quickly’ and she was always seeking ways to get on the water. ‘Genuinely I think I was a nightmare [for the Lower Boats Captains] but I was just so very very keen.’

It was new, and it was exciting, and we were doing it together, and that’s what made it fun.

Suddenly that idea of just studying, spending time in the Library, just going to my lectures and writing essays wasn’t my only priority. I started to realise that university wasn’t just about academics.

The exhilaration of racing, and the fun of rowing at Trinity where the coaches were enthusiastic and it was easy to make friends, was the start of a remarkable rowing career.

As a Fresher, Imogen won the British University and Colleges Sports’ Beginner Eights and in her second year, the Women’s Reserve Boat Race, Blondie vs Osiris. 

Losing and learning from that was a thread through her journey from First & Third, CUBC and three victorious Boat Races, to World and European Championships, and then the Olympics.

After missing out on a medal by a hundredth of a second in the Tokyo Olympics, she posted on social media: ‘You win or you learn.’

As audience members passed around her Olympic gold medal and the Trinity replica, Dr Grant said that for her, winning wasn’t necessarily the definition of success. During both Olympics, she and her rowing partner Emily Craig, executed their race plan – by now ingrained in their muscle memory.

 Success is about doing what you said you were going to do … it’s about the journey.