Olympic Rowing 2024 | Kat Copeland and the Golden Girl of the London Games

Kat Copeland’s giddy, disbelieving expression upon winning gold was one of the images of the London Olympic Games. As one of Team GB’s brightest medal prospects, Copeland and lightweight doubles partner Sophie Hosking delivered in front of an adoring home crowd to kickstart celebrations on what is now dubbed as ‘Super Saturday’ (the day Team GB won an unprecedented six gold medals, including three in 44 minutes on the athletics track).

12 years on, Copeland speaks to JRN in the lead-up to the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games about that day, that moment and what she is excited to watch this summer…

First of all, what are your immediate reflections looking back on London 2012? 

It’s so long ago now my reflections have probably changed (and faded!) over time but I’d just say the whole thing was this crazy period full of absolute joy and dis-believement (if that’s a word?!).

I know from other years that things coming together in Olympic year and for the regatta itself is part preparation, part luck, which I didn’t appreciate at the time as everything just seemed to go right for us, so I feel lucky that that was the time it worked. I loved every session we had on the water and felt incredible from the confidence we had built on our preparation camps, and I think when the boat feels good and you’re enjoying it, even though you can’t know what the result will be, you’ll usually be onto something good. 

Talk me through the season you had leading into the Games and how you coped with the weight of expectation as a home participant 

That season was a bit of a whirlwind and a real leap of faith. I had finished the 2011 season having won the lightweight women’s single at the U23 world championships which had been my ultimate aim up until then, and what I thought would be the peak of my rowing career! It was all I had thought about for years when training.

I was then sent to the senior world championships that year in my single to gain experience at that higher level. They were in Bled so you could watch races right at the start-line, and I remember after the singles racing had finished I got to go and watch our girls and the Greek lightweight double start one of their qualification races from the start-line. It was watching those races that planted the seed for me that I wanted to try for the London Games. I actually started at university in the September but couldn’t get this niggle out of my head that if I didn’t commit to try and get to London that year I would always regret it – how often do athletes ever get the chance to race at a home Olympics?!

So about a month after trying to juggle training at Tees RC and starting my studies I decided I needed to throw all my eggs in the rowing basket and just go for it for the rest of the year. Going into that Olympic season I was ranked as the third-fastest lightweight in the country, but knew I was young and relatively inexperienced so could potentially improve quicker than anyone else. Someone once said that the first time you do things – be it a trial or a particular race – is a really special moment as you go in with no preconceptions or expectations and I feel really lucky I could go into London with a clean book and open mind and just experience it all as it happened. I also feel really lucky Sophie and I crossed paths at the right time; we’d trained together on a senior camp in Avis before and from the first time we got in a boat, I could just tell it there was something special and exciting there.

Having been an athlete and worked on the other side, I think we have one of the best Olympic associations in the world, and they did a fantastic job at shielding us to some extent from the ‘pressure’ of being a home participant. It just felt like the whole country were supporting us – they were so happy and supportive.

The Olympic regatta was a crazy thing to be a part of on home water. What was your personal highlight, beyond winning gold?

At the regatta itself… I had a few. 

– Doing an early morning paddle on one of our non-race days – the sky was beautiful and blue, the water was flat and spectators were already starting to arrive so it felt like there was an underlying buzz about the place. One of the best 8km’s I’ve ever done!

– Watching Katherine and Anna win their final. I didn’t actually watch many races before our final as I didn’t want to be affected by the massive ups and downs of emotions everyone would be going through with their different results, but I couldn’t not watch that. 

– Going to the kiss and cry zone after our final and seeing my family and very first school rowing coaches who’d come all the way down to watch. They’d literally seen me from a 14-year-old falling in the river Tees on a weekly basis, in the middle of winter, to that point. 

– Not rowing related (!) but having my best friends from Tees come down for week two and just enjoying the Olympic park and nightlife with them! 

– Staying in the village in week two – they had EVERYTHING you could ever want, all for free. I got my hair and nails done, we got free McDonalds after nights out, got to people watch in the dining hall as these incredible athletes that I had seen on TV would file through. It was insane! 

– How confident were you lining up on the start line of the final that you had what it took?

I was confident that we could deliver what we had done in training, and I knew what we had done in training was up there in the right ballpark. We’d broken the world best time on training camp and finished top in percentages on our final 2km race run-through which I knew bodes well when the boats we’d been working with – the women’s pair and heavyweight double – had just won gold in their events. You can never be confident that you’ll win though, especially in a lightweight event! On the start-line, I was literally just thinking ‘you’re at Dorney, imagine you’re at final trials again‘.

What are your recollections of the race itself? 

I remember just before the race sitting in the warm up tent with my crossword book watching the men’s four stretching and getting ready for their race and the whole situation just seemed crazy to me. These were athletes I’d watched win Olympic gold medals in Beijing and now I was in the same tent as them getting ready to try and do the same thing.

After that it’s just snippets.

• I remember the first five strokes when everything seeming like it was in slow motion. I’ve only had that once before (at the J14 championships in Peterborough no less!).
• I remember getting to 500m and even though we were behind (I think third), I looked across and thought ‘bloody hell we’re in such a good place here‘, and that gave me so much confidence. We knew the others had a faster start than us and that our strength was the middle and end of the race so for us to be within the distance we were at that point gave me a real shot of adrenaline.
• I remember at 1000m we had a call to push on and I just thought to myself ‘this could be your last ever race, it’s an Olympic final, sod whatever happens after, just commit now more than you’ve ever committed‘. After that push we had really started to move on everyone and also from that point the volume of the crowd just grew and grew so it was one of the only races where I didn’t realise how awful I was feeling.
• I remember the last 150m/100m calling ‘stay calm, stay calm‘. That wasn’t obviously in our race plan but at that point we were winning and I was really just thinking ‘f*ck don’t catch a crab now and mess this up‘!

You immortalised yourself in Olympic folklore with your celebration. How did it feel to cross the line first and was your reaction 

I’d really convinced myself as much as possible that this race was just final trials all over again to stop myself getting overwhelmed by the opportunity. When we crossed the line and I finally allowed myself to think about the fact that it wasn’t any other race, that this was a home Olympic final and I had just won gold, the enormity of it sank in and I just felt absolutely overcome by this wave of excitement and happiness for me, Sophie, our whole team and everyone who’d helped us get there. It felt a bit like an out-of-body experience with the noise of the grandstands and the realisation of what had happened. 

Reflecting now, how special is it to you to have started the ‘Super Saturday’ gold rush?

When you’re competing, you are in a bubble and so I wasn’t aware of what had happened before or after us, although we did hear the noise of the crowds for the men’s four when we were sitting on the start-line for our final and I thought ‘wow, they are SO loud, they must have won!’.

I think the results that day, and all throughout the games, were just special as they fed energy back to the crowds, the organisers and the gamesmakers. They were giving us so much support, and when we started getting more and more medals you could just feel this incredible atmosphere build and build around the whole country.

I remember being on the tube travelling across London in week two of the Games and people were actually smiling and talking to each other – when has that ever happened?!

How did you adjust to rowing after the extraordinary highs of London?

With time?! It definitely took me about a year if I’m being honest.

I threw myself back into training way too early. I remember doing an ergo in the shed at Nottingham before a WCS camp in October and our physiologist asking me why the hell I was there. I realised I needed a break so went away for about four months travelling to work out who I was away from rowing (so privileged and cliché I know), and that space clarified my thinking in why I wanted to come back for Rio and what it was I loved about the sport.

Winning the Olympics was amazing, but what had actually given me the most over that Olympiad was the daily training routine; rowing my single along the Tees through fields of sheep and just having the time of my life training with my best friends. I think I was definitely a better and more confident athlete for having that time away from the sport. 

Looking ahead to the Paris Games, what are you most excited about watching? 

I’m not just saying this because of old allegiances but I’m genuinely excited to watch the British women’s team. The turnaround in the feeling within the squad, and the results over the past three years, have been absolutely incredible and I think when you’re riding that wave of improvement and energy anything can happen. It is probably pretty predictable (!) but specifically I am excited to watch the lightweight women’s double. They have been so consistent so as long as everyone stays fit and healthy they’ll be a force to be reckoned with. I’m excited to see what Rich can do with a really young and exciting group in the women’s eight, and also would love to see the women’s quad do well so will be watching them screaming at the telly. They’ve shown that they have the potential to do incredibly well and we have never won that event before so that would be history in the making. 

About The Author