Deborah Flood

 She raced in the quad for the 2008 World Cup series, finishing first and third.

Flood was a GB junior judo international and a county level 1500m and cross–country runner and shot putter before she took up rowing and her strength and athletic ability ensured rapid progress. She won the junior title at the 1997 British Indoor Rowing Championships and the 1998 World Indoor Rowing Championships and then took the Under 23 title at the British Indoor Rowing Championships in 1999.

Her international rowing career began with a bronze in the double scull with Frances Houghton at the World Junior Rowing Championships in 1998 and the following year they made an impressive Under 23 debut, winning gold at the World U23 Championships in Hamburg.

In 2000, Flood also won gold at the World U23 Championships this time in the single. She gained her first senior vest in 2001, finishing seventh in the double scull and sixth in the eight at the World Championships.

In 2002, she won the World Cup series in the double scull also with Frances Houghton after victories at Hazewinkel and Lucerne, and finished fourth at the World Championships in Seville.

The following season Flood raced with Rebecca Romero in the double throughout the season culminating in a fourth place at the World Championships in Milan.

In Athens Flood raced in the women’s quad and although they were unable to catch the fast–starting Germans they came through the field in great style to win an emphatic silver medal.

Flood raced for much of the 2005 season in a double scull with Elise Laverick, winning a bronze at the World Cup in Lucerne and finishing fifth in the World Championships in Japan.

The World Cup in 2006 brought gold with the women's quad in each of Poznan, Munich and Lucerne.

At the 2006 World Championships the women's quadruple scull fought an intense battle with Russia and were just beaten to the line in the dying metres of the race to take silver. In a strange twist of fate, their Russian conquerors later fell foul of a drugs test and the British women's quartet were restored, in January 2007, as rightful world champions once more.

Originally, from Harrogate, Flood moved south to study Physiology and Biochemistry at Reading University, from where she graduated in 2005. She is currently living and training at Henley on Thames.

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Last Updated August 2009