A SILVER medal on your first senior Team GB outing is not bad going.

Warrington’s Lucy Glover experienced that first hand last month – the former Lymm High School pupil took to Varese, Italy to race in the European Rowing Championships came back with women's quadruple sculls silver around her neck.

“It’ll do for now,” she joked.

“Obviously I’m very happy with the performance – we were going into the unknown because we hadn’t done any races before.

“We’d done pieces and we had a bit of a gauge as to where our seed was, but you just don’t know until you go and race people.

“Going in, we didn’t really know where to pitch our expectations.

“After the first rundown of the course, we were quite optimistic about things and so we wanted to win – you always want to win so we were really pleased with the silver medal.

“The Dutch crew [who won gold] have been consistent over the last four years in the top three at World Championship events and World Cups, so we were really pleased to lay down a great marker being within a second of them.

Glover, who represents Edinburgh University, raced in her quad with Reading University’s Mathilda Hodgkins-Byrne, Leander Club’s Hannah Scott and Charlotte Hodgkins-Byrne of the University of London.

The girls spent three weeks together and during that time, they qualified fastest from their heat.

So, how would Glover assess their relationship?

“So good – we’ve had just great communication between everyone in the crew.

“Everyone really took full responsibility of their roles and made sure we supported and facilitated each other to get the most out of the boat and ourselves.

“It’s a really powerful and nice thing to be part of. And we’re having a bit of fun on the side, having a laugh which is nice – it breaks up the monotony of things.”

A first GB vest is some achievement, and despite not getting gold (yet), Glover is pleased with the experience.

She said: “It’s a great first experience to lay down a marker and learn a lot, so I’m looking forward to using that moving forward and hopefully finding more speed.”

Warrington Rowing Club and Glover’s former coach Richard Sinnott have spoken openly about their proudness as to how far she has come.

And Glover speaks on her time there fondly.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without their help along the way, their support and their time,” she said.

“I’m so grateful for everything they’ve given me along the journey and the support they continue to give me.

“I owe so much to them for all of that because they’ve helped shape me and expose me to things that I honestly would not I’d have had the opportunity to do had I not started the sport back in the day.

“I’m always happy to go back down, see everyone, see the new faces, see some old faces and make sure I keep in touch with that because it’s nice and keeps my feet on the ground.

“I really enjoy doing that, seeing if anyone else can have half the experiences I’ve had now.”