Life after Rowing (2/5) - Emily Craig

At the end of every Olympic cycle, following the Olympic Games, there’s a flurry of retirements from rowing. After the Paris Olympics it was not different. Over this week World Rowing is highlighting five retirements. They all have different reasons; they all have their own story.

Competing at the British Indoor Rowing Championships was the beginnings of Emily Craig’s journey to Olympic gold in rowing.

“Every year my parents would go (to the Indoor Rowing champs). It was how they kept fit. I’d just turned 12 and they asked me if I wanted to have a go. I came away with a silver medal, a pure fluke as I had the drag factor at seven and just powered through it.”

This silver made Craig think, “I could be good at this”. After three sessions at the local rowing club, Craig was hooked and, as she told her mum, “I want to go to the Olympics”.

The beginnings of Craig’s Olympic quest came her way in 2013 when she made the British under-23 team in the lightweight quad. She then progressed her way through another under-23 season, into the senior team and then on into the top lightweight double for Great Britain. Leading up to the Tokyo Olympics Craig had been partnered in the double with Imogen Grant and at the 2019 World Rowing Championships they came away with a bronze medal.

The partnership between Craig and Grant continued to blossom and they went into Tokyo with high expectations. Craig and Grant made the final and, in one of the closest finishes of the Rowing regatta which saw all six boats cross the finish line within two seconds of each other, the British duo were fourth. It was fourth by just 0.01 of a second.

“It was a weird one to process,” says Craig. “The whole shadow of Covid had made for constant anxiety and worry. We had put out our best performance and didn’t make an error, but the margins were so tight. It was weird to cross the finish line and feel totally underwhelmed. Like, ‘now what’. I was determined, though, not for it to be a negative experience. Fourth place was not going to define us.”

“Tokyo was odd in a lot of ways. I didn’t appreciate how odd it was until I experienced the Paris Olympics. For Paris it was like, ‘oh this is what it’s supposed to be like!’”

After Tokyo Craig took some time away from Rowing.

“I thought I’d stop after Tokyo. I had a lot of working out to do on whether I continue on towards Paris and be happy about how I do it. I couldn’t make a gold medal the only thing to be happy about especially after Tokyo was a lesson in that results aren’t guaranteed. I thought if I can get these results under Covid conditions, what can I do without those circumstances?”

Craig was back in the boat and back racing internationally after Tokyo for the first World Rowing Cup of 2022, with Maddie Arlett. From that World Cup on, Craig, back in the boat with Imogen Grant, never lost a race again. They went into Paris as the absolute favourites and won the final by nearly two seconds.

Craig laughs when asked about when she decided to retire.

“I decided I wasn’t going to continue after Paris about three years ago!” But for practical reasons Craig didn’t announce it publicly sooner. “With lightweight rowing being cut and I had no desire to go to coastal or become a heavyweight rower, the decision was easy. It was three years in the planning.”

On top of that Craig was racing in Paris with a bulging disc in her neck. This stopped her rowing completely after the Olympics and reinforced her decision to retire. “I got back on the erg in January. I thought I’d pull my same splits, but my back didn’t agree.”

Since then Craig has been back on the water and back at the Caversham training centre. She has, however, planned to move to her local rowing club with the idea to do “civilised paddles on a sunny day”.

Craig has a new job and a ‘fancy title’ as Head of media and marketing in numismatics at an auction house (selling old and new coins and medals). She often gets up early to go for a row. She’s biking, doing weights and running. And she’s taken up ballet to be able to do something she’s “really bad at” (and, no, you can’t see the photos).

“I go out and do all of the things I haven’t been able to do. I’m doing an abnormal amount of exercise but it still feels like not much.”

Craig says she has not looked back and not even considered continuing.

“I never expected to feel so complete and satisfied from winning the Olympics and the sense of contentment from it.”