Meet Imogen Grant and Emily Craig – World Rowing Women’s Crew of the Year

For Imogen Grant and Emily Craig, 2023 turned out to be their year. The duo first rowed together for Great Britain in 2019 in the lightweight women’s double sculls and even back then their potential was obvious when they took bronze at the World Rowing Championships.

After finishing a heartbreaking fourth at the Tokyo Olympic Games, the duo turned up the heat and they haven’t lost a race since in this extremely competitive category. Grant and Craig can now make claim to back-to-back World Champion titles and, on top of that, they also set a new World Best Time when they raced at the 2023 World Rowing Cup II in Varese, Italy.

But for Grant and Craig the lead up to a two-year run of unbroken wins hasn’t been all smooth sailing.

The duo was paired up in the double when Craig’s partner Ellie Piggott suffered a stress fracture leading up to the 2019 World Rowing Championships. It wasn’t until their pre-World Championship training camp that Grant and Craig came together with only six weeks to prepare for this World Championship and Olympic Qualification event.

“It was a lot of changes for me,” says Grant. “It was a six-week crash course in rowing the double with Emily showing me the ropes. It wasn’t good for a long time and that was stressful, until the last week leading up to Worlds.”

They made it through the semi-finals to qualify for Tokyo and Grant describes the night before the A-final they really came together as a crew.

“We’d already qualified,” says Grant. “We’d had a good day and I remember the coach saying ‘don’t be afraid to try something new. Go out and have fun’. Emily and I looked at each other and we both knew we wanted a medal and we both knew how to get it.”

Since then Grant and Craig have not looked back, both rowing with the same goal in mind.

Craig is the more senior of the two in age and experience. She began rowing as a 12-year-old. Her parents were regular attendees of the British Indoor Rowing Championships and Craig gave the 2-minute race a shot.

“I did well,” says Craig who then went to her local rowing club and was instantly hooked. She continued rowing at university and then broke into the British senior team in 2015 after two years of representing the UK at the under-23 level. At her first senior World Championships she won silver in the lightweight quadruple sculls.

Grant grew up in the rowing town of Cambridge but she didn’t try the sport until university.

“I wanted to study medicine at Cambridge and arrived to find I was a small fish in a big pond academically. In Freshers Week I signed up to try rowing as we got offered two free drinks if we went along.

“The rowing bug but me pretty quickly,” says Grant who was so enthusiastic that by the end of the first term she was doing more sessions than the men’s team.

Initially Grant’s goals were all about the Oxford vs Cambridge Universities Boat Race making the Cambridge boat in her third year at university. She then made the British under-23 team racing in the lightweight quad. A year later Grant was in the senior squad.

For 2023 Grant and Craig approached the season in a new way. They’d had a winter training separately.

“We became better, stronger individuals and then brought that back to the double,” says Craig. They joined up just four weeks before the European Championships and they agree the limited time frame made it better.

“I was away in Cambridge and Emily was at the training centre in a single,” says Grant, “so when we got back into the double it was exciting.”

The duo is now full steam ahead towards the Paris Olympics and despite this being the last Olympics with lightweight rowing both of them are edging towards continuing after Paris.

“I’m not ready stop,” says Grant. “But I’ll have to find out what form rowing will take for me.”

“I thought I was going to retire after Tokyo,” says Craig, “but here I am and focusing on the next eight months. I’ll make a decision from there. Maybe I’ll cox for LA!”