HELEN Glover has described her Olympic gold medal winning performance as 'painful' as they blew away the opposition in the women's pair on Wednesday.

Glover, aged 26 from Penzance, said: "It was such a tough field; you can't get into a lead in a race like that and become complacent. It was painful but we did what we needed to do,"

"When it was hurting you could hear the crowd and you knew they were all cheering for you and that was such a boost, that is what home support is all about.

"We knew people were waiting for that first gold and we were aware we might be the first but we wanted to row our own race.

"We told ourselves it was just about our boat, although as soon as we crossed the line we realised how much expectation there had been, we're just relieved to have delivered and hopefully more medals will follow now."

Glover has only been rowing for a couple of months when the rest of the GB squad was at Beijing 2008, but she and Heather Stanning were paired together in 2010, where they showed their promise by winning silver at their very first World Championships.

Twelve months later they repeated the trick, now they've got the golden upgrade at the regatta that matters.

Glover, a promising junior athlete and hockey player, remembers watching the Beijing Olympics just a few months after applying to join the Sporting Giants programme, which aims to find tall athletes for sports like rowing.
The only problem was that Glover was just too small to be considered, meaning he had to stand on tip toes on selection day. Thankfully no-one noticed.

"When I was watching the Beijing Olympics I was still falling out of the boat all the time," she recalls.

"I realised I'd set my sights high but that made me just more determined to get selected for the Olympics, I didn't even dream of winning a gold.

"I've been in awe of the girls in the squad since and the things they do in training. I'm still learning and feel so blessed that someone took the chance on me."