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I’m going for last ever Olympics gold medal in my event before starting very different job three days after Paris 2024
The Cambridge rower admits Team GB feel an added pressure
TEAM GB’s Imogen Grant aims to win Olympic rowing gold - before a radical change of profession away from the water.
The double world champion will then begin working as a doctor in Oxfordshire just THREE DAYS after the Paris 2024 closing ceremony.
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Grant, 27, was introduced to rowing during her first year of studying medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2014.
She took a three-year break away from her course in order to train for Tokyo 2020, but returned to graduate last year.
Juggling Olympic training with the additional commitment of completing a foundation year at a Slough hospital has been no easy feat.
Speaking exclusively to the SunSport during a break from training at British Rowing's Caversham training base, Grant said: "This is the last Olympics with lightweight rowing in it.
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"The reason that I came back is because we want to win Olympic gold and we want to taste that victory.
"It's not a given though. There's a lot of very fast lightweight women. It's the only event at that weight, so all of the best athletes are in it.
"It's daunting, but also quite exciting to be able to say that that's what we want, and that we might actually have a chance of achieving it."
Since the Tokyo Olympics, Grant and her doubles partner Emily Craig are undefeated, coming away with eight gold medals from eight elite events.
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This inspiring run has seen them become back-to-back world champions and European champions between 2022 and 2023.
But Grant and Craig, 31, have unfinished business.
The Cambridge-born stroke rower explained that the heartbreak they endured in Tokyo 2020 forced them to become more mature.
The lightweight pair were well placed entering the final sprint, but were denied a bronze medal by 0.01 seconds, edged out by Italy, France and the Netherlands.
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She said: "The Tokyo result really doesn't cross our minds very much in training.
"It feels like a very long time ago now. It's more about building on our world championship wins and carrying that momentum into Paris.
"But knowing what it's like to be on one side of a very narrow margin, has definitely improved our race craft and the way that we row."
Fourth place became a running theme in Tokyo, with six boats finishing just outside the podium, as British rowing failed to achieve a single gold medal for the first time since the 1980 Moscow Games.
However Grant and Craig are among the favourites to claim gold in just under 50 days time.
They continued their unbeaten streak with a World Rowing Cup victory in Varese, Italy last month.
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Paris will represent lightweight rowing's last stand at the Games, after organisers axed it from the Olympic programme.
In Los Angeles 2028, it will be replaced by the more inclusive discipline of beach sprints, which does not need a rowing lake.
It is a fast-rowing format of the sport that combines , running, racing, navigation and power.
On that Grant added: "It does mean the stakes are slightly higher. You could become Olympic champions forever.
"It's somewhat bittersweet. I've had really good memories as a lightweight, and I only took rowing seriously because of it."
Grant also admitted to feeling a certain level of pressure as a result of Team GB's huge success in rowing in the past.
She said: "British rowing is very recognisable and everyone remembers Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and Katherine Grainger.
"They are names that a lot of people are going to know for a sport that isn't particularly well known.
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"There is some pressure there, but to be honest, there's a lot more internal pressure.
"We want to do the best that we can do rather than trying to achieve a certain result."
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