READING, England (ABP) — You may be hearing a lot more about Debbie Flood in the next 18 months. Already with two Olympic silver medals to her name, the British Baptist rower has genuine designs on a gold upgrade in 2012.
British Baptist rower — and expected gold-medal contender in the 2012 London Olympics — Debbie Flood.
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Flood, alongside teammates Frances Houghton, Annabel Vernon and Beth Rodford, took first place in the women’s quadruple scull race in the most recent rowing world championships, in New Zealand in November. Given the difficult conditions in Lake Karapiro’s choppy waters and a field featuring defending champions Ukraine, the manner and size of the victory were impressive.
Even so, it was essentially a stepping stone to London, says Flood, who at age 30 has amassed three world-championship golds.
“We work on four-year cycles,” she explains. “We do have the world championships every two years, but we’d give up all those for the Olympics, and 2012 is the big one.”
Olympics to juvenile-prison work
Flood has contrasting Olympic experiences, despite the same result at each. Her first games in Athens in 2004 ended with a surprising silver. She was in a young team and unknown territory. No one quite knew how they would fare. “It was a fantastic experience,” she recalls.
At the Beijing games four years later the aim was to go one better. Her quad had been world champions three years running going into the Olympics. “There was a lot of expectation and pressure, and we wanted and believed we could get that gold medal too,” she says.
The team led for six minutes of the six-and-a-half-minute race, before being edged out by China at the finish. “We were gutted to the core,” says Flood. “Absolutely devastated. No words could console us. We could hardly speak. Our photos are horrible — we were crying on the podium.”
After Beijing, she made what might seem an unusual decision — Flood took a break from the sport to work with troubled youngsters.
“Being a full-time athlete means you have a very rigid structure — you can’t go to family events, you can’t see friends and family as much because you’re away or you’re training. I’d done that full time for 11 years, alongside university and part-time work,” she says. “I’d decided before the end of Beijing I needed a break — mentally and physically.”
Flood’s success at the Athens Olympics had led to a number of invites into schools to give assemblies and motivational talks. Through this she mentored pupils with difficulty in school — and found herself drawn to them.
“I’d work in the class with them, and see them getting chucked out for being disruptive. I understood why they needed to be chucked out, but I’d think what about them? I guess I really felt God putting on my heart to work with kids. I began to think that was maybe the way forward after my career.”
British Baptist rower Debbie Flood (left) and a teammate after receiving silver medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
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To find out whether she could work with such disruptive and challenging children, she opted to put herself in “the most extreme position” — by volunteering in a juvenile prison.
The work was challenging, but enjoyable, even if recidivism rates are high, she says. “It’s such a multi-stranded role — you’re there because you’re security, but you have the role to be the carer, the role model, to break up fights, calm the situation down, negotiate.
“It was quite hard to take everything in. You look for those small glimpses of change in the lads — your job is to give them some rehabilitation, normal interaction with adults, in the way they should be interacting.
“It wasn’t restful, but I enjoyed it.”
She adds, “I know I really want to work with disruptive youngsters in some way, whether I end up in the prison service or in social work. That’s the area God has been calling me.”
Role as faith ambassador
Flood’s early rowing successes certainly helped to shape her faith, and now provide an anchor for it. She grew up in a Christian family (her grandparents were missionaries in Liberia) and went to Guiseley Baptist Church near the northern English city of Leeds. She committed herself to Christ when she was 15, although she wasn’t baptized until she was 21.
She didn’t set out to become a rower, explaining that the sport is not as common in Yorkshire, where she was raised, as in other parts of England. Flood’s first athletic success came in martial arts and track and field. She also used to run with her father, and only discovered the rowing machine when he was directed to it after a knee injury.
She enjoyed it and went on a summer rowing course. Although initially she says she was “awful, terrible,” she came to the attention of Mark Banks, then British Rowing's chief coach for juniors.
He not only spotted her latent athletic ability, but a desire for success.
“She was very bad,” Banks concurs, “but I predicted she would go to the Olympics and win medals. I saw it mentally. There was clearly someone who was very driven.”
Flood took a break from rowing in 2009 to work with troubled youngsters at schools and juvenile-detention facilities in the U.K.
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Banks took Flood on, which required that she move to the southern English city of Reading. Her church in Yorkshire contacted other congregations there to find housing for her. The person who responded lived in Caversham, 30 seconds away from the boathouse where she needed to train.
Under Banks’ supervision Flood improved markedly, so much so she stood a chance of making the team for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Ultimately she wasn’t selected, and it seemed like a hammer blow. “I was devastated. I thought, ‘God, why have you put me here?’ I’ve just wasted two years for nothing.”
But as one door closes, another opens. Her Sydney non-selection enabled her to compete in both the under-23 championships and the Henley Royal Regatta. She became the first British woman to win both events in a single rowing shell — and began to take stock of what had happened.
“At that point in my life I looked back at the random events and thought, ‘Wow, I’m in the right place.’ If I could choose to go to the Olympics instead of what I’ve done, I wouldn’t.
“It made me think that God’s totally got my life in his hands. He knows where he wants me to go, rather than me thinking where I want to go. That gave me the reality of God in my life.” She was baptized shortly thereafter.
Strenuous training
Her rowing career is more strenuous than ever. Training takes place three times a day, with just three weeks off a year. Everything is aimed at improving performances. At this level of competition, the difference between winning and losing is often a matter of fractions of seconds.
How does her faith square with the single-minded determination required to be the best in the world?
“…[I]t can get very intense,” Flood says. “But for me, as a Christian, I’m able to look at the bigger picture. We do get stressed, it gets so intense, but I keep coming back to that: My life is in God’s hands. Even after Beijing."
Flood, unlike some athletes, doesn’t tout God as some sort of sporting good-luck charm. “My crewmates can joke, ‘It’s ok, we’ve got Debbie, we’ve got God on our side,’” she says. “God’s not going to make me win things. But it gives me a bigger perspective on life…. You go through highs and lows, but he’s never not there. I don’t think I’ve ever doubted I’m a child of God.”
She also realizes the responsibility that comes with her role. Flood has always been open about her faith, right from the early days in an interview that appeared in a rowing magazine.
“I mentioned that I went to church. Next thing, it’s gone to the whole rowing world,” she laughs.
“God has given me this ability to row, and I’m in the rowing world as an ambassador and as a witness for Christ.
“There is a pressure. I have to remember that I am representing Christ, and that’s not always easy at times in such a pressured environment…. You get the banter, but it’s a very good-natured group. Never any hostility. Lots of very good conversations, lots of surprising conversations.”
Her faith, Flood says, ends up providing her a center of gravity in a challenging environment.
“God is the center of my life, and I’ll always come back to that, even if it’s not every hour, every day. If things aren’t going the way I want them to go, yes, I might be moody. But at the end of the day I’ve got to trust that God’s got me where he wants me to be.”
And that, come London 2012, might just include another medal-award podium.
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Paul Hobson is news editor of The Baptist Times, the weekly newspaper of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.