Naomi Riches: From ‘blind girl’ at school to rookie rowing world champion
Naomi Riches did not set out to become a Paralympic champion. At school, she was known as “the blind girl,” sat at the front of the class with large-print worksheets, and often made to feel different before anyone saw what she could actually do.
Rowing changed that.
Within four months of joining the Great Britain adaptive rowing set-up, Naomi was sent to her first World Championships and came back with gold.
She went on to win six world titles, Paralympic bronze at Beijing 2008, and Paralympic gold at London 2012.
In 2016, she set a Guinness World Record as the first woman to row the navigable Thames by single scull, completing the 165-mile challenge in 47 hours, 59 minutes and 54 seconds.
Now a paralympic speaker, resilience coach and facilitator, Naomi speaks about disability, pressure and resilience through the reality of elite sport, not theory.
In this exclusive interview with the London Keynote Speakers Agency, Naomi discusses how rowing changed her relationship with her disability, why missing out on selection in 2010 became one of the biggest lessons of her career, and what her record-breaking Thames row taught her about control, trust and resilience.
Q1. You have said rowing almost found you by accident. How did a student who never expected to become an athlete end up in a GB boat and winning a world title within months?
Naomi Riches: “In all honesty, it found me.
“I tried rowing briefly at college. I was at a college for blind and visually impaired children in Worcester, and it was a wonderful time in my life, having had a very tricky education in mainstream school, being the only disabled child in a school of 800.
“I tried rowing, had a go, and it was really good fun. So, when I went to university, I went to my local rowing club and said, ‘I'd like to learn to row, please.’
“They said, “Really sorry, we're not doing learn-to-row courses at the moment.”
“I went, ‘Oh, well, I'll give that up as a bad job.’
“I was just a very unhealthy student doing bicep curls at the student union bar.
“Then, in my second year of uni, I got a phone call one day from a man called Simon, and he said, ‘Naomi, I hear you've tried rowing at college, and I hear that you quite enjoyed it. Would you come and try for the Great Britain disabled rowing team?’
“I went, ‘Yeah, but why?’
“He said, ‘Well, in all honesty, you tick some boxes. You're tall, you're a girl, and you can't see very well, and we need you because we have no girls, and it has to be a mixed crew, and we've only got boys.’
“I went, “Okay, yeah, fine.”
“So, I went down to London and trialled. I happened to be fast enough. Four months later, I was packed onto a plane with my team and a bag full of GB kit, sent off to Spain to compete in my first World Championships, and we crossed the finish line first.
“So, world champion in a sport I'd been doing for four months.
“It was quite a crazy learning curve, but it was the opportunity more than anything. For the first time in my life, somebody had said to me, ‘You can because you're registered blind.’
“Not, ‘You can't,’ not, ‘We're going to try and make it work,’ not despite the fact. It was, ‘You can because of your disability represent your country.’
“I was like, ‘Well, yeah, cool. I'm there. Brilliant.’
“Then, obviously, the rowing career developed, it became a Paralympic sport in 2005, and Beijing was suddenly on the cards.”
Q2. Paralympic sport can be ruthless. What was the moment in your rowing career that properly tested whether you could handle the pressure?
Naomi Riches: “There are many things that test your resilience as a rower or as a sports person.
“For rowing, it's often repeatedly getting up at silly o'clock and rowing with hands covered in blisters. But there are certain situations that will test your emotional resilience and mental resilience more than others.
“In 2010, we'd become a Paralympic sport. We debuted at the Beijing Paralympic Games, and because of that, people wanted to be in the sport.
“You've got Paralympic status. You're on that biggest stage, and more people turn up at trials who have disabilities, who have maybe rowed for a while, and they want to see if they can make the crew.
“Somebody showed up at the 2010 trials who was the most phenomenal athlete. She had the same disability as me, visually impaired, registered blind, and she had a massive score on the rowing machine. She was lifting heavy weights, she had massively strong thighs, and she was just fit and brilliant.
“I thought, ‘Oh God, it's only two years to London. How am I going to do this?’
“I ended up putting a lot of my time and energy into trying to be another version of her. I almost went back to this little girl at school who wanted to be liked, wanted to fit in and wanted to be as good as other people.
“I ended up wasting so much energy on something I had no control over.
“Needless to say, I didn't make it into the 2010 World Championships because she beat me by half a second to a seat in that crew.
“But I went away, trained on my own with some support from Marlow Rowing Club, which was then my local club, and really had to focus on what I was good at.
“I can control what I'm doing training-wise. I can control the scores I have on the rowing machine, my diet, my sleep patterns and how I look after myself, but I cannot control what this girl's doing. There's no point in me trying.
“It was a really hard lesson to go, all I need to do is beat her on trials day. I don't need to do anything else. Just keep it simple. Take the emotion out of it. Focus on the facts. Beat her on trials day. That's it.
“So, when it came to London, I beat her by eight and a half seconds, and I went to London.”
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Q3. Your Guinness World Record attempt pushed you through 165 miles on the Thames. What did that teach you about chasing a goal when there is nobody else who can do the work for you?
Naomi Riches: “The Guinness World Record was quite a crazy one. It was quite a lot bigger than I expected it to be.
“In 2012, I was a group of five, and obviously the coach, then six. Obviously, she couldn't row the race with us, but she was on the bank watching and probably biting her nails.
“I thought, I want to do something that is just mine, but I want to do it for the right reasons.
“That was me sitting in a coffee shop, having a conversation with the lady who ran a charity that I was a patron of. I want to do something for you. I want to do something to raise awareness of the abilities of people with disabilities.
“I think it's a really good idea to row the length of the navigable Thames from Lechlade to Gravesend because it's 165 miles. If I do it in a single sculling boat, then other people will have to steer me.
“So, it's going to be a sense of trust and good relationship building, that the people who steer me, that I get on with and understand, and we can work together, but also a test of endurance.
“It tested me. It absolutely tested every fibre of my being. I think it was just six seconds short of 48 hours I did it in.
“One of the things it taught me more than anything is that sometimes you can see your goal. You know where you're headed, and there are people around you who can help you, cheer you on, offer a service or a specialism that you don't have.
“But really, there's no one else who can get you there except for you.
“When you're tired, sore, hungry, emotional, when you've been rowing for 45 hours with half an hour's sleep, the only person that can pick up and carry on is you.
“Nobody can do it for you. Even though they can all see your goal, they can say, “It's so close. I can touch it.” But you're the only one who can pick up your oars and go again.
“That was the point for me.
“I learned a lot about myself in that process, how to do things on my own, but also who to trust and who are the people around you that are going to shout for you and support you.
“No one else but you can achieve what you want to achieve.”
This exclusive interview with Naomi Riches was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.
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