Lola Anderson believes Team GB's women’s quadruple sculls were destined for Olympic gold after a year to remember.
The crew, consisting of Anderson, Georgie Brayshaw, Lauren Henry and Hannah Scott made history when they took gold in a photo finish win against the Netherlands in Paris.
The gold medallists trialled the Dutch until the last 100 metres, where they pulled ahead for the nation’s first win in the event ever by 0.15 seconds.
A victory in which Anderson believed was written in the stars after a golden year.
"We had quite a turbulent season last season, I was injured, in and out, in and out," she said.
"But then we came in last minute at the world championships and managed to win there so that was the point where I believed we could do it.”
But Anderson admitted that winning the medal wasn’t exactly on the forefront of her mind before claiming world champion status, instead training for her love of the sport.
She said: "Before that point, the idea of becoming an Olympic champion just seemed so outlandish that I didn’t even really train with it as a sort of forefront of my mind goal.
"I was just training every day because I loved it and I was training every day because I really enjoy the sport that I do and the people I get to row with."
The dramatic finish of the race captured the sentiment of the Games, and brought Great Britain another moment of sporting history.
Compared to the rest of her teammates, Scott had already seen a maiden Olympics in Tokyo and had learnt a lot from her experiences there ahead of Paris.
And after calling the crew to increase momentum in the final 100m that saw Britain overhaul the Dutch boat, Scott's experience, or 'madness', rang true.
She said: “I went to Tokyo and came seventh. I think that was quite hard for me and I definitely think that was maybe one of, not darker days, but I had a lot of learnings from that experience, and I just really wanted to bring that forward to these girls.
The tears are flowing 😭
— Team GB (@TeamGB) October 23, 2024
Our women's quadruple sculls crew won gold on the final stroke in Paris 🚣♀️🥇
And what a moment it was! @BritishRowing pic.twitter.com/DIE5aXFiaD
“People say we had confidence in Paris but maybe it was just madness because we weren’t even in the lead at 1900m, we had 100m left and I said, ‘we’ve got this.’
“I knew the whole way down the course that we had it, even though it didn’t look like it from our angle.”
Henry added: “In the bow seat, I probably have the best sense of where we are in the race and I knew I was slightly ahead of their bow seat crossing the line because I was looking at her. I was like ‘don’t celebrate’ because that was too close to know. and then seconds late on the big screen, just said ‘Number one, GBR’.”
And as the crew heard Henry’s 'happy' scream at seeing the big screen, they knew that Olympic gold had finally come.
Brayshaw added: “This is just incredible and I’m proud of myself and our team and our coach and everyone who’s helped us get here.”
Sportsbeat 2024