Yet that was not the end
Roberts was 14, eager but inexperienced having only learned to row a year earlier when her state school become one of the few in the country to have its own rowing club. Five years on the Oxford Dalvin Cook Jersey University student smiles at the memory as she prepares for her second Boat Race.
“It was going so well,” she says. “But just as I made the last call, black buoy, which signalled there was 500m to go, my blade snapped in half. It took us 10 minutes to row the last bit – and to make matters worse, my friends in the boat then had to row back to Barnes bridge. It took an hour and a half and I just sat there freezing and crying.”
Yet that was not the Latrell Sprewell Womens Jersey end of the story. “I wanted to keep the broken oar but my coach said he needed it for insurance purposes,” http://www.officialathleticsproshop.com/Reggie_Jackson_Jersey she explains. “But unbeknown to me he took it to Bisham Abbey, where he worked and the GB rowing team train, and gave it to the Olympic champion Dame Katherine Grainger to sign.
“A week later he gave me the oar – and Dame Katherine had written on it: ‘Alice, congratulations on smashing some blades – now go and smash some records!’”
So far the 19-year-old Roberts, who is in the second year of a philosophy and linguistics degree, is doing her best to live up to Grainger’s advice. But without her alma mater, Cheney school in Headington, starting Oxford’s first state school rowing club, she probably would not have taken up the sport.
“I was a competitive swimmer but when the http://www.cardinalsofficialonlinestore.com/Chandler_Jones_Jersey school set it up, I thought I’d give it a go,” she says. “We would do one session a week on the erg (indoor rowing machine) and then after lunch every Wednesday we would walk 20 minutes to the water and row. There weren’t many people at first but we had Peter Haining, a three-time world champion helping us out, so it was quite cool.”
The story soon caught the attention of the local newspaper, the Oxford Times, who noted how pupils “were blowing the elitist rowing club stereotype out of the water”. They also spoke to Roberts, then 14, who http://www.falconsfootballofficialonline.com/Tevin-Coleman-Jersey.html admitted: “I never thought I Lance Dunbar Youth jersey would have been able to become a rower – it always seemed too
At that stage she had also joined the City of Oxford rowing club and within two years she had international trials. “At my Mark Messier Jersey club there were other state school kids around me and it felt pretty normal,” she remembers. “But sometimes at trials and regattas you would notice the differences. http://www.authenticbrewershop.com/authentic-scooter-gennett-jersey.html When I had GB trials I just went with my mum because I was the only person from my club doing it. But Headington girls’ school, which isn’t far from my old school, had 15 girls there – along with several specialist coaches.
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