Helen Glover and Heather Stanning fully focused on Olympics

Rowing pair Helen Glover and Heather Stanning admit it's easy to remain motivated in the run-up to the Olympics and say they feel privileged to compete at the very top of their sport.

The European and world champions were last week tipped by Sir Steven Redgrave to become Britain's best ever rowing crew if they are successful in retaining their Olympic title at Rio next year.

And the dominant coxless pairs duo, who are also the current world record holders, are putting their bodies on the line in pursuit of a second consecutive Olympic title.  

"In years like this the motivation is easy because the Olympics are just around the corner," Glover told Sky Sports. "But it can be difficult in the years in between because we are putting our bodies through a lot of stress. But the motivation comes from feeling really privileged to be able to do this.

"If it ever gets tough we remind ourselves what we are doing and what we get to do and that this is an opportunity that doesn't come to many people. That helps to keep us inspired."

The duo's unbeaten run stretches back to 2011 but the partnership was broken up for a year when army officer Stanning was called up for a six-month tour of duty to Afghanistan.

"We're now four years unbeaten and even that year we only lost one race," Stanning said.

"But we are unbeaten in this Olympiad. And even when I had a year out Helen remained unbeaten with somebody else (Polly Swann) and that alone is a massive feat.

"To create a winning partnership like that with someone else in the very short period of time that she did is an absolute credit to Helen as an athlete and I don't think that has been recognised enough yet either."

Glover said: "To get the wins that we got throughout the season was really special, not because of the wins, but because we really stepped up in what was a really difficult year.

"It's quite difficult to reflect on the year that we've had because a lot of what we are doing is looking forward and I think that is very much in our nature. Maybe we'll have time for reflection after next year's Olympics but we see each year up to the Olympics as a building block."

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