Helen Glover

Helen Rachel Mary Backshall (née Glover; born 17 June 1986) is a British professional rower and a member of the Great Britain Rowing Team. Ranked the number 1 female rower in the world in 2015–16, she is a two-time Olympic champion, triple World champion, quintuple World Cup champion and quintuple European champion. She and her partner Heather Stanning were the World, Olympic, World Cup and European record holders, plus the Olympic, World and European champions in the women's coxless pairs. She has also been a British champion in both women's fours and quadruple sculls.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics, in partnership with Heather Stanning, she set the Olympic record and won the gold medal in the women's coxless pairs, the inaugural gold medal won by Team GB in 2012 and the first Olympic gold medal for British women's rowing. In December 2012 she won the BBC Olympic Superstars game show. At the 2013 World Rowing Championships in South Korea, she became the world champion with her partner Polly Swann, with whom she also won the 2014 European Rowing Championships at Belgrade and thus became the first woman to hold the Olympic, World and European titles for the coxless pair. She retained her world title and set the world record time in partnership with Heather Stanning at the 2014 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam. They retained their world title at the 2015 World Rowing Championships in Lac d'Aiguebelette, France. In 2016, they retained their European title at Brandenburg an der Havel, set the World Rowing Cup record time at Poznań and again won gold at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She retired after the Olympics to begin a family.

In 2021 it was announced that she had restarted training, and on 11 April she regained the European Coxless Pair title in Varese with Polly Swann. She and Swann finished fourth in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the first mother to row for Britain. Glover said "Everyone will remember the year of the pandemic for their own reasons, but for me I'm going to think 'that was the year that took me to another Olympics' And that's bonkers."