FOR the past five years, GB has been utterly dominant in the women’s coxless pair. In the shape of Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, Britain won almost every major competition going and developed an air of invincibility that few could match. However, with Stanning’s retirement in the aftermath of the duo’s second Olympic gold medal in Rio last summer, coupled with Glover’s sabbatical from the sport, a major hole was created in the team that needed to be filled.

Step up Melissa Wilson who, along with Englishwoman Holly Hill, have stepped into Glover and Stanning’s shoes. The 2017 World Championships begin on Sunday in Sarasota, Florida but despite GB’s historic dominance in the women’s coxless pair, the fact that Wilson and Hill will be making their senior World Championship debut over the next week means that there is not any undue pressure on the young pair. “It’s really exciting to be going to the World Championships because that’s been a goal for a while,” said Wilson. “Most of the athletes in the team have raced through the World Cups plus the Europeans Championships this season so they know where they’re at whereas we’ve been at university through the year so the racing’s more of an unknown. Actually though, that’s quite freeing because we don’t know what’s going to happen and we’ll just see how far our speed can take us. We’re very driven and our friendship helps us remain focused on what we’re trying to achieve, so we’re feeling positive.”

While the previous success of Glover and Stanning does not increase the pressure upon Wilson’s shoulders, she admits to feeling incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from legends of the sport. “Holly and I have been training in the boat that Glover and Stanning won gold in at London 2012 and the boat they won gold in at Rio has been shipped out to Florida for us to race in at the World Championships which is pretty crazy,” the 24-year-old said. “They were the crew that you would watch and just know they’d be great. They’re very impressive as athletes and really nice people too. Who knows what the future will bring and if Holly and I will remain in the pair, but for this year it’s been great and we’ve definitely used them as inspiration.”

Wilson is originally from Edinburgh but was, she admits, entirely unsporty as a child, revealing that in her high school yearbook she was voted “most likely to be a librarian”. “I was very uncoordinated when I was at school and not sporty at all – I’d be writing myself sick notes for PE,” she said. “I used to think I didn’t like sport because I wasn’t competitive but now believe I actually was competitive, it just frustrated me that I wasn’t very good at things. That’s a terrible attitude to have though!”

However, the Scot’s relocation down south to study at Cambridge University was a real turning point in her life. On enrolling for university, Wilson knew she wanted to try rowing – it was, she felt, the ideal distraction from the library – but she could never have imagined quite how successful she would become in her new pursuit. Within just a few years of sitting in a boat for the first time, Wilson had won a silver and a bronze medal at the under-23 World Championships and had competed in three Oxford-Cambridge Boat Races, with her rapid progression surprising even herself. Her high-school classmates would, no doubt, be surprised to hear that in her university yearbook she was voted “most likely Olympian”, highlighting the remarkable change in direction of her life.

While selection for the Rio Olympics last summer was, Wilson says, always an ambitious goal, it was made more difficult by injury at the time of final trials. However, after a year back in Cambridge to study law, Wilson has relished training with the GB squad full-time this summer and with a spate of retirements in the aftermath of the Rio Olympics, there is an opportunity for Wilson to establish herself in the GB team going forwards.

The Tokyo Olympics are now less than three years away which, in the world of elite sport, passes in the blink of any eye and Wilson already has turned her attention to making her Olympic debut. “I’m definitely thinking about Tokyo already,” she admits. “I think that not making selection for Rio was good for me – I don’t feel like I deserved to be in that squad so having another four years to train really hard will mean that if I do made the team for Tokyo, I’ll go as a better version of myself and that’s what you’d want. I find it easier to focus on more immediate goals, especially the challenge of delivering the speed we find in the pair this year.

"Tokyo is the ultimate target but I know I can’t work on everything at once so it’s about deciding what I want to improve right now and knowing that there are other things that I want to work on over the course of this Olympic cycle. Hopefully it’s going to be an exciting few years.”