For Helen Glover, motherhood means that ‘every inch of happiness’ doesn’t rest on Olympic success

When British rower Helen Glover posted a photo of her hand on Instagram, it offered a gruesome snapshot of what she is putting her body through ahead of Paris 2024.

When she posted a photo of her hand on Instagram – bloodied and blistered with pale, dead skin hanging limply from a cut – it offered a gruesome snapshot of what British rower Helen Glover is putting her body through ahead of this year’s Olympic Games. The photo was taken while Glover was midway through a training camp in Portugal – a brutal, friction-induced side effect of the hours she has spent on the water or on a rowing machine. How Glover dealt deal with her battered hand was sometimes by taping the fingers, she explained, and other times by just gritting the teeth. But these kinds of ailments are just one consequence of training for what will be her fourth Olympics. “The hardest bit is the day-to-day of being exhausted, but getting out of bed and going training again,” the 37-year-old Glover tells CNN Sport. “Physically, it’s kind of like Groundhog Day: every day getting up knowing you’re going to do it again.” Glover is an Olympic veteran, a two-time gold medalist at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics in London and Rio. However, her fourth-placed finish in Tokyo three years ago was arguably just as impressive given her abbreviated preparation for the Games. It was January 2021, a year after giving birth to twins and four years after announcing her retirement from the sport, when Glover embarked on a bold plan to compete at the Olympics with just six months of serious training under her belt.