Article: Mark Taylor

Images: Charles Drapeau, Felix Diemer, and Annie Lush’s personal collection

You can sense the emotion in Annie Lush’s voice when talking about the 2001 Women’s Boat Race.

“I just felt invincible because it seemed impossible, and because of the team and our cox as well. I had never won anything in that way before, and I was just hooked.”

Lush is describing Cambridge University’s win by the closest verdict in the history of the race, three feet, and a moment which was in many ways set to change her life.

It was the trigger for a sporting obsession which has gone on to include representing Team GB at the London Olympics, winning four world championship titles, being part of the first all women’s crew in the Volvo Ocean Race and most recently, helping to launch the Magenta Project.

For some, a lingering exposure to any type of sport can sow the seed for the future, while for others there can be an exact moment that starts the fascination.

Growing up in Poole, Dorset, Lush had always been a sailor, but on going to study geography at Cambridge University, she was stuck in a landlocked county where the best that sailing had to offer was on a lake.

“I definitely didn’t have any aspirations to go to the Olympics, or anything like that,” she says.

“When I went to Cambridge, I thought I was going to get a real job – that was the goal.”

As a way to be near the water, and with a height and reach that are so often described as ideal for rowers, Lush made her way to Emmanuel College Boat Club, who at the time were Head of the River in the May Bumps on the River Cam.

By the end of her first year, she was persuaded to trial with Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club, and little was she to know then that it was to kickstart a lifelong association with professional sport.

The penny-dropping moment came at the Nottingham Water Sport Centre, the venue for the 2001 Women’s Boat Race after the towpath on the Upper Thames at Henley was shut as a precaution because of the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

Cambridge were the smaller crew and had been down by a length during the 2,000m race, but they battled back to win by what remains the closest margin in the history of the event.

“Basically, we didn’t know we had won when we had finished,” explains Lush.

“We just felt invincible. It was amazing and a very cool feeling. For me, that was the first time I had really been in a big team and won something in a big team and put that much work into it.

“I was completely hooked. I remember going to those careers’ fairs after the Boat Race and asking everyone how much time I would have off to be able to do sport, then realising that I wanted to go to the Olympics and do sport full-time.”

You do have to wonder though, what exactly was the hook?

When you think about it, many people have won Boat Races, for example, but they do not act as the inspiration to completely change career direction, especially into an area which is so variable, unstable and unpredictable.

In Lush’s own words most geographers at the time were going into asset management or consultancy, so what was the attraction to stay in sport?

“It was the team; it was being in such a big team,” she explains. “Not one girl in the boat, even though it looked like we should definitely be losing, gave up for a second.

“Everyone just kept with the plan and it was an amazing feeling. I still feel really emotional about it.

“I think that was what was so cool about the Boat Race, there were a lot of people. Nine of you in the boat, and 18 or more in the squad. It is a lot of people to work together, that is what is so unique about it.”

Lush had considered trialling for the British rowing squad ahead of the Athens Olympics, but made the decision not to do so, worried that the added commitment would hinder her graduation.

Instead, she played in the Women’s Varsity Match in 2002, as Cambridge beat Oxford.

But on finishing at university, Lush returned to sailing intent on achieving the dream of competing at an Olympics.

Having spent 10 years within the Team GB set-up – and having two near-misses as substitute for the Athens and Beijing Olympics – the Olympic dream was fulfilled by Lush at London 2012. However, it did not live up to expectations as despite having won the world championships three times, and not been outside the world’s top two for the previous two years, they were unable to earn a spot on the medal rostrum.

“It was very hard but on the other hand, I was very proud of what we achieved; we had won a lot of stuff up to it,” says Lush.

“When we did not qualify in 2008, that was the end of the world for me. Almost London was a bit less the end of the world. It was still hard to know what to do after, though.”

The keelboat (Elliot 6m) was a team of three, Lush was joined by sisters Lucy and Kate MacGregor, and the yearning remained to be part of a team, only this time a bigger team on a bigger boat.

During the years competing for British Sailing, she had become passionate about what was then called the Volvo Ocean Race, previously the Whitbread Round-the-World Race.

“The problem was there had not been an all-women team in the race for 15 years since it had become fast – that had become my goal,” she explains.

“In professional sailing outside of the Olympics, it is not very even at all and that became a bit of my drive.”

For the 2014/15 race, Lush earned a place in Team SCA women-only team, and they became the first all-female team to win a leg of the race in 25 years, and they also earned three in-port race victories.

“Maybe that helped a bit with the blow of the Olympics. In the end I managed to take the next step without that gold medal.”

What is fascinating about Lush is that every experience seems to be the driving force for the next.

Whereas some people may have been content with achieving a goal or an ambition, being part of Team SCA was just the beginning.

There still remain very few girls and women sailing the high seas, and Lush explains that there was a pressure on Team SCA in that race which hindered their hopes of chasing an overall victory.

“There was a big expectation on us, and it was quite hard,” she says. “I wanted to do well and win things, but we weren’t allowed to make any mistakes.

“It is quite hard to win when you can’t take any risks, but there was definitely a pressure that if we didn’t all come back alive, and various things like that which happen in the race, then there might not be any women in it again.”

That became the next motivating factor, a quest to find greater parity between the genders in off-shore racing, so four members of Team SCA formed a charity called the Magenta Project, with Lush one of the directors.

Sailing is a male-dominated world, with minimal pathways for women despite all of the different skills and roles that are required, such as engineers, designers, boat builders, sail makers and the huge support crew behind the athletes.

The Magenta Project is committed to creating equal access and opportunities for women in sailing.

“The idea was really how can we continue the momentum and it is not linked to one of us, it is a big network of women that if someone stops and does something else it will still continue,” says Lush.

“Some of it was making sure that we were promoting stories of female role models.

“The strange thing when I started off-shore sailing is that I didn’t really know quite a lot of those women and I didn’t even realise there were women out there that knew how to fix hydraulics and race off-shore, or navigate.

“It was about spreading some of that. A lot of it was about advocacy and pushing events outside of the Olympics.”
Lush’s role as an executive director is non-paid and so, in a full circle way, she teaches geography and sport, while also still sailing.

She is also able to fall back on what triggered the sporting obsession all those years ago in order to get added motivation, with the progress to get parity between the men’s and women’s Boat Races.

“It’s amazing,” adds Lush. “The first time the Boat Race for women was on the Thames, my old crew couldn’t believe it because it just seemed like something that wouldn’t happen or just couldn’t happen for some reason.

“It is huge how much it has moved and is a real inspiration.”