Flood looking to better Olympic silver

6:15pm Wednesday 14th May 2008

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GUISELEY rower Debbie Flood is warming up for her second Olympic Games looking to go one better than the silver medal she obtained in Athens four years ago.

Last weekend Flood, 28, and her fellow rowers in the GB women's quadruple skulls underlined their potential for this year's Olympics in Beijing by winning gold in the Munich World Cup Regatta.

On a day when GB won five golds and three silvers - all bar one silver in Olympic classes - as well as the world cup points trophy, the British women's quadruple scullers as world champions strengthened their high hopes of Olympic gold with a win against strong opposition from Germany and China.

They started as they meant to carry on in the final. They were ahead all the way and Germany and China, both strong in this event, could not put them off track.

By 500m they were leading by two seconds, at 1000m the smooth-looking machine was three seconds ahead and, at the line, with the Germans and Chinese closing the final margin of victory was under two seconds from Germany.

Flood said: "We were really up for racing today, the times in the heats were close so we knew that the other crews would be strong today."

Her crewmate Annie Vernon said: "There were a lot of nerves as it was the first race of the season but we went to the start knowing that all our training partners had already won or taken medals. That gave us such confidence."

Joining Flood and Vernon in the boat were Fran Houghton and Katherine Grainger.

Great Britain finished in 6:54.38 with Germany second in 6:56.29, China 1 third in 6:57.24, China 2 fourth in 7:06.49, Australia fifth in 7:10.76 and Ukraine sixth in 7:12.50.

Flood won an Olympic silver medal in the women's quad in 2004 after twice being World U-23 champion. She won a gold medal at the 2007 World Rowing Championships and finished third in the women's single at the 2007 GB Rowing Senior Trials in Belgium.

She won gold in the quad at the World Cup in Linz June 2007, won silver at the World Cup in Amsterdam and gold in the quad at the World Cup in Lucerne.

She was a GB junior judo international and a county level 1500m and cross-country runner as well as shot putter before she took up rowing.

Her strength and athletic ability ensured rapid progress. She won the Junior title at the 1997 British Indoor Rowing Championships and the 1998 World Indoor Rowing Championships and then took the U-23 title at the British Indoor Rowing Championships in 1999.

Her international rowing career began with a bronze in the double scull with Frances Houghton at the World Junior Rowing Championships in 1998 and the following year they made an impressive U-23 debut, winning gold at the World U-23 Championships in Hamburg.

In 2000 she won gold in the single scull at the World U-23 Championships and gained her first senior vest in 2001, finishing seventh in the double scull and sixth in the eights at the World Championships.

In 2002 she won the World Cup series in the double scull with Frances Houghton after victories at Hazewinkel and Lucerne, and finished fourth at the World Championships in Seville.

The following season Flood raced with Rebecca Romero in the double throughout the season culminating in a fourth place at the World Championships in Milan. Romero shared Olympic silver glory with Flood but has now switched her attention to cycling where she has become a major force.

In 2004 Flood raced in the women's quad and they were worthy World Cup series winners after victories in Poznan and Lucerne and silver in Munich.

In the Olympic Games in Athens they qualified for the final by winning their heat and although they were unable to catch the fast-starting Germans they came through the field in great style to win silver.

Flood raced for much of the 2005 season in a double scull with Elise Laverick, winning a bronze at the World Cup in Lucerne and finishing fifth in the World Championships in Japan.

The World Cup in 2006 brought gold with the women's quad in Poznan, Munich and Lucerne. At the 2006 World Championships the women's quadruple sculls fought an intense battle with Russia and were just beaten to the line in the dying metres.

In a strange twist of fate, their Russian conquerors later fell foul of a drugs test and the British women's quartet were restored, in January 2007, as rightful world champions once more.

Flood, whose parents live in Guiseley, moved south to study physiology and biochemistry at Reading University, from where she graduated in 2005. She is currently living and training at Henley on Thames and is vice captain of Leander Rowing Club.

Lottery Funded through UK Sport and sponsored by Camelot, she is learning Chinese in preparation for the Beijing Olympics later this year.