Caragh McMurtry loves rowing."When the boat is singing, it just feels right. It is such a satisfying feeling of being connected, being in time with the hull and bending the blade - it almost feels effortless.""I can't quite get across how really traumatic a lot of the times were on the team," she says.
"You are doing something, rather than just existing. There is a common purpose, there is a point to being together - there was so much about sport that spoke to how my brain works and it allowed me to socialise in a useful way." "Rowing is a sport where you can be an individual within a wider team - you are in charge of your part of the equation but still part of the whole," she says.
McMurtry grew up on a council estate. Her home clubhouse wasn't attached to a private school or located in a leafy London suburb. Instead, she rowed for Coalporters in Southampton - a club established by workers delivering coke to ships and more used to racing in choppy coastal waters, than pristine boating lakes.
McMurtry spent five years medicated; training hard, feeling bad and struggling for selection, before a new performance director - Brendan Purcell - revisited her diagnosis.Their conclusion was radically different. McMurtry did not have bipolar disorder. She didn't need the pills and their side effects.
Together with the panel, she drew up a three-point plan. The team nutritionist was asked to provide McMurtry with bland food, as highly flavoured or spiced options were overwhelming. The coaches were asked to avoid asking her open-ended questions in the morning and to provide a sum-up at the end of team briefings to ensure they had been understood.
"I just gave myself permission to be different," she says. "For years and years, I was bending over backwards trying to fit the mould which I just didn't fit into.Image caption, "They are way ahead. Perhaps they are the ones without such a structured, rigid, tradition-based system, but they are the ones I get positive stories about."Increasingly, teams and organisations are reaching out to her. A handful of Premier League clubs have been in contact. She has done workshops for the likes of GB Triathlon."We are aware that Caragh looks back on her time in the sport with less positive reflections than we would hope for any of our athletes," it said.
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