Gold Medal Flapjack, Silver Medal Life

Alison Mowbray wasn’t a sporty kid and thought that being good at sport was a pre-requisite for going to the Olympics. She thought she might be a doctor, a teacher, a Blue Peter presenter or maybe the first ever female naval submariner.

“Then at 18 I discovered rowing. From that point on, for the next 15 years, I didn’t have a choice anymore.”

She made the British team at 27, by which time she had already lived a whole other life.

“I never planned to be inspiring so really this is just the story of how I did the things I love, the very best I could do them, and how very far it took me.”

You don’t choose to go to the Olympics. You lay out everything you have and let the Olympics take it – no deals, no bargains, no questions asked, no hope of return. Maybe it will be enough and the Olympics will choose you, and maybe it won’t. That’s what you do. That is this story.

This is a Silver medal life of achievement, addiction, alcoholism, anorexia and Alzheimer's. But a Gold medal story of passion and perseverance, and not letting anything or anybody get between yourself and your dream. And of what happens next – perhaps the most Olympian journey of all – after the blaze of glory with the medal held high.. Because what do you do when you’ve achieved everything you ever wanted to achieve? Where do you go from there?

“This started out as a recipe book with a few stories from my life, and then the story took over. It also became really important to me to write this as a history of British women’s rowing because I don’t think many people on the outside really understand how incredibly self-motivated and tough us women have had to be pull ourselves up, often in defiance of the first fledgling attempts at some sort of system,” says Alison Mowbray.