“I really like food,” Olympian Katherine Grainger explains when I ask about her diet. “I eat it a lot and I eat out with friends a lot, friends who cook well”. Our chat, her autobiography and my subsequent research reveal nothing surprising regarding the GB Team rower’s food intake.
Born and raised in Scotland, where she also did her first two law degrees, Grainger likes haggis (“I wouldn’t have it every night but it’s got amazing flavours in it”) and loves ice cream (“Our Italian training camps are broken up with trips to Melamangio, quite possibly the site of the best ice cream in the world and often an incentive to make it through the final gruesome training session of the week”). When returning from a spell of training or racing abroad, Grainger tends to seek out her favourites, “Thai food, food with a little bit of flavour and spice and I really, really love nicely cooked steak”.