Katherine Grainger
Three Olympic silvers, then gold at 36, then another silver at 40 after two years out of the boat
Katherine Grainger grew up in Glasgow and did not row until she was a law student at Edinburgh University, where she tried it because a friend did. She was tall and strong and improved fast, and by the Sydney Olympics in 2000 she was in the British quadruple sculls that won silver, the first Olympic medal ever won by British women rowers.
That silver was a joy. The next two were not. In Athens in 2004 she and her partner in the pair led until the final strokes and were overtaken. In Beijing in 2008 her quad was favourite and finished second again, and she has described the days after as the worst of her life. She was 32 and many people assumed she would stop.
She did not. She paired with Anna Watkins in the double sculls and they went into the London Olympics of 2012 unbeaten in three years. On a Friday morning at Eton Dorney, in front of a home crowd, they won by a length and a half. Grainger was 36 and had been trying for 12 years.
She took two years away, finishing a doctorate on homicide law, then returned in 2014 with her body protesting. The comeback nearly failed. In Rio in 2016, aged 40, she and Vicky Thornley won silver, making her at the time Britain's most decorated female Olympian. She later chaired UK Sport.