SWANN Polly

General
OCCUPATION
She completed her degree in medicine at the University of Edinburgh and qualified as a junior doctor in 2019. Between 2010 and 2016 she had taken an extended break from her studies to focus on sport, and had to balance rowing and studying for the latter part of her degree. "I remember my first day back on the ward and everyone was talking in three-letter acronyms. I had to write everything down and look it up. It was go to hospital, do the tutorials, see patients, try to do well in my degree, but also do some training and rest and recover. I also found that there are many parallels between sport and the NHS [National Health Service]. You have to communicate and really work as part of a team. It has definitely given me a different outlook. Yes, in sport, you get fatigued and you want to perform, but it is a self-imposed pressure." After the Olympic Games in Tokyo were moved to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked an interim foundation year as a doctor with the NHS. She returned to competition at the April 2021 European Championships in Varese, Italy. (henleystandard.co.uk, 19 Apr 2021; telegraph.co.uk, 23 Aug 2019)

BREAK AND RETURN
She took a two-year break from rowing after winning silver in the women's eight at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. She returned to competition in June 2019 at the World Cup event in Poznan, Poland. "I never properly switched off and I really couldn't put it to bed. The frustration was that I know that in Rio, we had a great result. I was really happy with the process and the medal. But I thought I could still do better. I probably wasn't in my peak state of fitness, or rowing as well as I can do. That's maybe what spurred me on, knowing I could do better. You've only got your body once so I thought I should go for it now because I can't make a comeback when I'm 45." (heraldscotland.com, 24 Aug 2019; winningstudents-scotland.ac.uk, 05 Feb 2018)