Olympic heritage for Oxford Brookes rowing
Double Olympic gold medallist Steve Williams has said his university training helped prepare him for the top. ‘By the time I left Brookes I knew exactly what I wanted to do,’ he explains. ‘I wanted to row at the Olympics and Brookes had given me that foundation.’
Eight Brookes rowers competed at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Indeed, half of the crew in the silver medal-winning men’s eights had trained at the university.
Every year around half a dozen of our current students or alumni are picked for Team GB. We are utterly committed to providing the best possible training facilities and developing excellence in our novice and expert crews.
We aim to build the boathouse extension by Christmas 2010 to give our rowers as much use of the new facilities as possible before the London Olympics. We will reach the target of £1million through commercial sponsorship, grants and support from donors and the university.
I had never been in a boat before I came to Oxford Brookes. I was a novice and started in my second year. I got the feeling anything was possible. There was no one saying ‘you can’t do this – you can’t achieve’. It got me to the Olympics.
