Great Britain cox is one very busy Olympic athlete

OXFORD Academy science teacher Caroline O’Connor has a pretty big 2012 in store.

O’Connor juggles her teaching commitments at the former Peers School in Littlemore with coxing the Great Britain women’s eight, who she hopes to steer to medal success at the Olympics.

There is only one coxed women’s boat in the Olympics, but O’Connor, who took the eight to fifth in Beijing in 2008, is in pole position to be selected.

While most of her fellow Olympians are full-time athletes, the 28-year-old Oxford Brookes graduate is happy to balance her two jobs.

“It is quite tricky,” she said: “To be honest, it wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t work at the Academy.

“They have actually been really, really supportive. What I have been doing recently is working three days a week during the winter and then three to four days of rowing as well because they are not in the eight that often.

“But with it being Olympic year, obviously it is full steam ahead and we will be in the crew boats a lot more.

“The Academy are being very flexible with my working hours and it is fantastic.

“The kids all know what I do, so if I am not there, they know why.

“But also when we got back, from the World Championships in Bled, we put iPlayer on and watched the race and the interviews.

“They are part of it too and the school are really, really supportive.

“Mike Reading, the principal, is fantastic. He is always asking questions and asking how it’s going. He is really into it and gives me loads of messages of support.”

She added: “Everyone there is really excited. Before we qualified for the Olympics, everyone was talking about the Olympics.

“I said ‘hold fire, we have got to get there first’.

“But now we have qualified, that is a massive relief.”

O’Connor said being a teacher and coxing an Olympic boat complemented each other and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We had a bit of time off after the World Championships in Bled and I know the rowers were away doing things, but I actually spent a lot of my time at school,” said O’Connor.

“It is all right because it is my choice to do the two things.

“The reason why I chose to do both is that although I love my rowing, I also love my teaching and I think they help each other.

“For example, I could just say ‘right, it’s Olympic year, I am just going to be at rowing all day every day.

“But I actually don’t miss very much rowing. I will perhaps miss the odd session when the girls are in the gym, but they help each other.

“In the classroom, I can use some of the skills I get from rowing, managing people and the way we want to structure and organise things.

“But I also bring quite a lot of my teaching skills into my coxing.

“One of the skills of being a teacher is that you have got to be super organised and in control of what’s happening and really forward thinking about what you are doing.

“That is also quite important with rowing. The more organised you are, the fewer slip-ups there will be.”

O’Connor lives in Henley, but still coxes for Oxford Brookes where her rowing journey started in 2001.

“I was 18 when I went to Oxford Brookes and I had absolutely nothing to do with rowing,” explained O’Connor.

“It is actually a very good rowing university, but I didn’t know that back then.

“I was asked if I wanted to try coxing and I didn’t even know what it was. I was like ‘oh, no thank you’.

“And then someone else asked and I said ‘oh, OK I will give it a go’.

“It just took off from there and here I am!

“I still know the guy who asked me and I often say thank you.

“I still represent Brookes.

“If I hadn’t have been a cox at Oxford Brookes, then I wouldn’t have made the [British] team, so this is my way of paying them back and keeping my skills fresh.”

You can read O'Connor's first regular column in today's Oxford Mail