Rio 2016: Helen Glover and Heather Stanning inspired to rowing victory by coach's cancer battle

There will not be a more emotive gold at these games, and that is saying something. From the first stroke to the last, 220 punishing heaves into history, Helen Glover and Heather Stanning found added meaning in their golden moment at the Estacio da Lagoa.

Though they were the two pulling on the oars, there were three voices in that boat, the echo of coach Robin Williams ever present as they powered to a second successive Olympic gold in the women’s pairs, the first females in the annals of British sport to scale such a height.

Their dominance was absolute, after all this was their 39th outing unbeaten, again unprecedented. What we see, two brilliant athletes skating over the surface with the elegance of swans, does not wholly reflect the nature of the triumph.

Behind every rowing gold is a battalion of willing hands contributing the incremental gains that make the difference, and no hands were more instrumental than those of a coach who 30 months ago did not know whether he would live to see this day when diagnosed with cancer.

As he said, it was touch and go. “I had bladder cancer which is one of the things they can operate on and they did. If they don’t it goes everywhere. It would have been a pretty bad situation. It alters your outlook a bit.”

Williams was diagnosed in December 2013. The trio were fortunate that he was able to begin his treatment at the start of 2014 out of season, keeping the disruption to a minimum, if that is ever the right expression in circumstances such as these.

“I needed to get paid so I had to get better quickly. It was an incentive. I was in hospital and I was walking around the ward - 20ft, 30ft 50ft at a time when they were saying a few steps is enough. That's how it starts off. Rowing in itself is a journey but that makes it a bit bigger.”

In the immediacy of victory their first thoughts were for Williams, who had spent a nervy morning talking a little more than usual in an attempt to process his own anxieties. Stanning, a captain in the Royal Artillery regiment with a tour of Afghanistan behind her, said “I've been an emotional wreck this week, maybe that's a bit extreme, but it means such a lot.

“It just reiterates how much this means to me, how much me and Helen have worked and Robin as well. It's been a fantastic three years back with Helen and Robin. Without Robin we would be nobody, so a massive thanks to him he's the best coach in the world. I couldn't have asked for a better person to train with, or a better coach.”

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The pair set a punishing rhythm that their rivals could never match. Even in the final 500 metres when the crews from New Zealand and Denmark began to close, Stanning and Glover had too much in reserve. “We were very much in the moment. Helen was calling 'stay in the process, stay in the process'.

“It's really important not to get carried away. We had a good start and at the same time we weren't looking to do anything amazing. We weren't looking for fireworks today, we were just looking to do a good row and to go out and win that race, which we did.

The pair will take a year before deciding their futures. Glover has a wedding to attend next month, her own to television adventurer Steve Backshall. For now she just wants to enjoy the moment. “I didn’t want to say this was my last race. That would have meant too much pressure.

“In London it took about six months to realise that I was an Olympic champion. It was all so new and I was so stressed. Here it took about four minutes. This feels so much better,” she said.