CUMBRIAN Sports Award guest speaker Dr Alison Mowbray captured the audience at the Low Wood Hotel, with a gripping speech on achieving dreams.

Mowbray told the 200-strong audience of her journey from a nine-year-old being picked last on the school team to an Olympic silver medal.

Mowbray’s passion for her sport was apparent throughout and it was strange to hear her belief she could achieve an Olympic medal only materialised aged 29.

Recalling her life dipping in and out of rowing with Cambridge University, she said she only dreamed of reaching the Olympics when she finished second in national trials.

Mowbray added: “I didn’t ever have Olympic ambitions despite doing a couple of Cambridge v Oxford races. It was only when I came second at the trials, two years before the Olympics in Sydney, when people started asking ‘who is she?’ that the lightbulb went on.”

Mowbray told of her intense training days over the next two years and finally being named in the Olympic squad for Sydney, where she missed out on a medal.

With a personal motto of ‘expect nothing, blame no one, do something’, Mowbray set out to achieve a medal at the Athens games four years later, asking herself, “what do I have to do today to get there? What if I got an Olympic medal?”

And four years on she lined up in the coxless fours with just 2000m separating her from that elusive medal.

Mowbray’s excitement rattled through the room as she gave a commentary of the final stages of the race, right down to the last 40 strokes, 30 strokes and the final push for the line.

Her initial disappointment at being pipped to the gold was soon overtaken by a sense of delight as she realised she had achieved what she set out to - she had her Olympic medal.

She said: “I felt fantastic to have my medal and it was my first international medal too. It still makes me feel like that.”

Completing an enthralling talk Mowbray praised the county’s stars and reminded them to do something better each day and think where they could get by doing so, telling them to have the courage to chase and achieve their dreams.