 2012 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Nationality | British | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 21 April 1978 Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Country |  United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Adaptive rowing | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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David Smith MBE (born 21 April 1978) is a British adaptive rower who won a gold medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.
Smith was born on 21 April 1978 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. [1] He was born with a club foot and for the first three years of his life he had his bones repeatedly broken and reset to correct his foot's alignment. [2]
He graduated from the University of Bath in 2009 with a bachelor's degree in sports performance. [1]
In 2010 he underwent emergency surgery after doctors found a tumour inside his spinal cord at cervical spine level. The surgery left him temporarily paralysed, an issue that was later determined to be the result of a blood clot. [2]
He earned a Black Belt in Karate and was in the British squad for 6 years. He took up sprinting in a desire to compete at the Olympics as karate was not an Olympic sport, and became East of Scotland 400m champion in mainstream athletics, and took third in the 200m behind Olympian Ian Mackie. But running round bends caused stress fractures which forced him to quit.
He turned to bobsleigh, because straight-line running was fine and made the GB team as a brakeman. But neck and back pains interrupted training and he missed a 2006 Winter Olympics spot by one-hundredth of a second. [5]
Smith was introduced to adaptive rowing in 2009 at a Paralympic Potential Day run by the British Paralympic Association. [1] He competes in the legs, trunks and arms adaptive mixed coxed four (LTAMix4+) event in which he won a gold medal at the 2009 World Rowing Championships, competing in a crew with Vicky Hansford, Naomi Riches, James Roe and cox Rhiannon Jones. [6]
In 2011 he competed at the World Rowing Championships held at Lake Bled, Bled, Slovenia. He won the gold medal in the LTAMix4+ event alongside crewmates Pam Relph, Naomi Riches, James Roe and cox, Lily van den Broecke. [1] [7] They completed the one kilometre course in a time of three minutes, 27.10 seconds, finishing nearly five seconds ahead of runners-up Canada. The result qualified a boat for Great Britain into the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London. [8] The crew repeated their gold medal result at the Munich World Cup event in 2012. [1]
Smith was selected along with Relph, Riches, Roe, and van den Broeke, to compete for Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in the mixed coxed four event. [9] The event took place between 31 August and 2 September at Eton Dorney. [10] The Great Britain crew won gold.
Smith was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to rowing. [11] [12]
Despite his success at rowing, medical issues forced Smith to retire from that sport, and he subsequently joined British Cycling's Paralympic Academy programme in 2014. [13] He continued to compete at Paracycling despite further surgery on the tumour, taking ninth place at the final Para-cycling Road World Cup of the 2015 season in Pietermaritzburg, but in January 2016 he announced that he'd need another operation that ended his plans to compete at the 2016 Paralympic games. [14]
Thomas James MBE is a British rower, twice Olympic champion and victorious Cambridge Blue. In a British coxless four in 2012 he set a world's best time which still stood as of 2021.
Great Britain, represented by the British Olympic Association (BOA), competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. The United Kingdom was represented by the British Olympic Association (BOA), and the team of selected athletes was officially known as Team GB. Britain is one of only five NOCs to have competed in every modern Summer Olympic Games since 1896. The delegation of 547 people included 311 competitors – 168 men, 143 women – and 236 officials. The team was made up of athletes from the whole United Kingdom including Northern Ireland. Additionally some British overseas territories compete separately from Britain in Olympic competition.
Great Britain competed at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Great Britain sent a delegation of around 400, of which 212 were athletes, to compete in eighteen sports at the Games. The team was made up of athletes from the whole United Kingdom; athletes from Northern Ireland, who may elect to hold Irish citizenship under the pre-1999 article 2 of the Irish constitution, are able to be selected to represent either Great Britain or Ireland at the Paralympics. Additionally some British overseas territories compete separately from Britain in Paralympic competition.
Helen Glover is a British professional rower and a member of the Great Britain Rowing Team. Ranked the number 1 female rower in the world in 2015–16, she is a two-time Olympic champion, triple World champion, quintuple World Cup champion and quintuple European champion. She and her partner Heather Stanning were the World, Olympic, World Cup and European record holders, plus the Olympic, World and European champions in the women's coxless pairs. She has also been a British champion in both women's fours and quadruple sculls.
Great Britain competed at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, United Kingdom, from 29 August to 9 September 2012 as the host nation. A total of 288 athletes were selected to compete along with 13 other team members such as sighted guides. The country finished third in the medals table, behind China and Russia, winning 120 medals in total; 34 gold, 43 silver and 43 bronze. Multiple medallists included cyclist Sarah Storey and wheelchair athlete David Weir, who won four gold medals each, and swimmer Stephanie Millward who won a total of five medals. Storey also became the British athlete with the most overall medals, 22, and equal-most gold medals, 11, in Paralympic Games history.
Alexander John Gregory, is an English former representative rower. He is a six-time world champion and a two-time Olympic gold medallist at 2012 and 2016 in the Coxless four.
Pamela Lillian Relph MBE is a British adaptive rower who won gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Paralympics, thus becoming the first double gold medallist in Paralympic rowing.
Naomi Joy Riches MBE, DL is a British adaptive rower who won a bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Paralympics and a gold medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.
James Roe MBE is a British adaptive rower. He was part of the mixed coxed team that won gold at both the 2011 World Rowing Championships and the 2012 Summer Paralympics.
Lily Jacoba van den Broecke is a British rower who competed at the 2012 Summer Paralympics as the coxswain in the mixed coxed four for Great Britain, and won the gold medal.
Great Britain and Northern Ireland competed, under the name Great Britain, at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 7 September to 18 September 2016. The first places for which the team qualified were for six athletes in sailing events.
Jeremy McGrath is an Australian Paralympic rower. He represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.
Josephine "Jo" Burnand is an Australian rowing coxswain. She represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.
Lauren Rachel Catherine Rowles, is a British parasport rower and former wheelchair athlete. She won gold with Laurence Whiteley in the trunk-arms mixed double sculls (TAMix2x) at the 2016 Summer Paralympics.The pair repeated their achievement in Tokyo at the 2021 Summer Paralympics.
Laurence Whiteley is a British parasport rower. He won gold with Lauren Rowles in the trunk-arms mixed double sculls (TAMix2x) at the 2016 Summer Paralympics.
Grace Elizabeth Sorrel Clough is a former British Paralympic rower who competed in the mixed coxed four event. She won multiple gold medals at the World Rowing Championships and World Rowing Cup alongside a gold at the 2016 Summer Paralympics. Clough was inducted into the Sheffield Legends Walk of Fame in 2016 and named a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2017.
Great Britain competed in the 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo, Japan. Originally scheduled to take place between 21 August and 6 September 2020, the Games were postponed to 24 August to 5 September 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. British athletes have competed at all sixteen consecutive Summer Paralympics since 1960.
Erin Kennedy is a British Paralympic coxswain with the GB Rowing Team. Erin is a three time World Champion, three time European Champion and World Best Time holder in the PR3 Mixed coxed four. She has won every international competition and is the first and only coxswain to ever hold the Paralympic, World and European titles at the same time.
Oliver Stanhope is a British Paralympic rower who competes in the coxed four in international level events. He is the son of former rower Richard Stanhope.
Daniel Brown MBE is a retired British pararower who competed at international-level events. He is a Paralympic champion, a triple world champion and a double world cup champion in the mixed coxed four with Grace Clough, Pam Relph, James Fox and Oliver James.
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