Biography
Grainger's family moved to Netherley, Aberdeenshire and Katherine represents Edinburgh's St Andrew Boat Club in rowing events. She trained on the River Dee, which has the distinction of being the only river she has fallen into whilst rowing.
She is a three time Olympic silver medalist. She first won silver at Sydney in 2000 in the woman's quadruple sculls with Guin Batten, Gillian Lindsay and Miriam Batten losing to a German team. Four years later in Athens in 2004, She won silver again when she took part in the coxless pairs with Cath Bishop losing to Georgeta Damian and Viorica Susanu of Romania. She returned to the quadruple sculls in Beijing 2008 when she won her third silver with Annie Vernon, Debbie Flood and Frances Houghton narrowly losing to China after taking the lead for some of the race.
Grainger has also won eight medals at World Championships. The first of these was a bronze in 1997 in the eight, then a gold with Bishop in 2003, a gold in 2005 with the quadruple scull, with Houghton, Sarah Winckless, and Rebecca Romero, and in 2006 her quadruple scull were promoted to gold following a drugs test on the winning Russian crew. This quad had Debbie Flood instead of Romero, who had retired after the 2005 world championships. Another gold came in 2007, again in the quadruple sculls, with Annie Vernon replacing the injured Sarah Winckless. In 2009, having switched to the single scull after the Beijing Olympics, Grainger claimed a surprise silver at the World Championships in Poland. In 2010, Grainger teamed up with Anna Watkins in the Double Sculls and they embarked on an unbeaten season, culminating in victory in November in the World Championships in Lake Karapiro, New Zealand and then defending the title in an injury disrupted season in 2011, in Bled, Slovenia.
She has also won the Rowing World Cup in the Quadruple Sculls in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010 and the Double Sculls in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Grainger has an Honours law degree from Edinburgh University, a Master of Philosophy degree in Medical Law from Glasgow University and is studying for a PhD in Homicide at King's College London. Grainger has remarked "Without planning it both my Olympic career and my PhD have met at the same time and the culmination for both is 2012 – not by design."
She took up Rowing at the University of Edinburgh in 1993 and was President of the Edinburgh University Boat Club in 1996/97. She was elected the Edinburgh University Sports Union's female athlete of the winner (Eva Bailey Cup) in 1995/96 and 1996/97 and was inducted to the University's Sports Hall of Fame on the 29th of May 2008. She was elected as Honorary President of the Scottish Amateur Rowing Association in November 2005, and a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta in 2008, only the third rower to be elected while still competing. In the 2012 Olympic Games in London Grainger was crowned Olympic champion with a gold medal.
In July 2008 Katherine appeared in the BBC Two cooking show Chinese Food Made Easy with Ching He Huang. In the show Ching taught her how to cook a healthy version of sweet and sour pork. The show attracted 2.9 million viewers at a share of 13% that night.
She was created a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) on 17 June 2006.
On 3 August 2012 she finally got her Olympic gold medal at London in the double sculls with Anna Watkins.
Read more about this topic: Katherine Grainger
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