When Amy Hunt declared 'you can be an academic badass and a track goddess' following her 200m silver medal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Imogen Grant will have known exactly what she was getting at.
After all, the 29-year-old rower is an Olympic gold medallist and a junior doctor having graduated from Cambridge University.
Whether on the water or on the ward, Grant knows what it takes to deliver.
Having been a keen sportswoman in her youth, playing 20 different sports during her formative years, it wasn’t until university that rowing came to the fore for Grant.
“I thought rowing was a dumb sport,” she joked. “I knew that you got blisters. I knew that you went backwards. I knew you had to get up early and row in the wind and rain.
“In Freshers Week, if you put your name down for a taster session, they gave you vouchers to go get two free drinks.
“I have one very vivid memory from that very first rowing session. The senior who was sitting in front of me said, ‘I think you're picking this up quite quickly. I think you could maybe be good at this’.
“Seeing that spark of possibility and curiosity was what made me put my name down and come back again.”
From there, the sport has taken Grant on a remarkable journey which, alongside Emily Craig, has resulted in Olympic success and becoming a two-time world champion in 2022 and 2023.
But those honours came post the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics and it was in the Japanese capital where the foundations for Grant’s Parisian pièce de resistance were laid.
In the Sea Forest Waterway situated in Tokyo Bay, one of the tightest women's lightweight double sculls finals took place.
In heartbreaking fashion, Grant and Craig missed out on a medal by one hundredth of a second, pipped to bronze by Dutch pairing Marieke Keijser and Ilse Paulis.
Click here to watch Grant talk about here journey
They were only half a second off winners Valentina Rodini and Federica Cesarini of Italy.
But rather than that being the end of Grant’s story, it proved to be just the start.
“That fourth place has defined a lot. It was a massive reminder that you can't be just your sport, because when sport goes wrong it would leave you with nothing,” she continued.
“But there was something quite daunting about going, ‘okay, one more chance, are we going to do it, can we make it count?’ We know what we need to do to get it right this time and if we're going to commit, by God, we're going to commit.”
And that’s what Grant and Craig did; commit.
And it took them all the way to Olympic glory as they went unbeaten through the next cycle and beat Romanian pairing Gianina Beleagă and Ionela Cozmiuc by over 1.5 seconds in the final.
Even Costochondritis, a condition which inflames the cartilage between the rib and the breastbone, couldn’t stop Grant.
“Had I not had the confidence of my doubles partner, it would have been really difficult,” recalls Grant on her complete belief in Craig.
In August last year, Grant began her foundation year as a junior doctor at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough.
It has meant Grant’s fast-paced life has continued, but the memories of that glorious summer’s day in the French capital will forever bring a smile to the Cambridge native’s face.
She added: “Everyone knows what it's like to feel joy, feel disbelief, to achieve something. For some people it's getting married, for some people it's a first-born child, for some people it's passing a driving test, and it genuinely is just that feeling. It's as simple as that.
“But I think it's also so alien to so many people because so few people get to go to an Olympics, let alone cross the line first. It gives you so much perspective.
“I'm so lucky to have a body that can do elite sport when I'm treating people who are really sick. And I think it just makes me really grateful for what I've managed to achieve.”
Sportsbeat 2025