By Tyrone Smith
“The next event would have been the Commonwealth Games two years later, two years before the Olympics again, so the aim would have been to do the Commonwealths and plan for the next Olympics.”
However, there would be no other major championship outing, or any other race for Sarah.
Less than a year after hitting the heights in Atlanta, during a training run on her bike near Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire, she was hit by car “from behind at great speed and smashed up my lower leg”.
She admits: “I am incredibly lucky to be here, I know that. Somebody was looking down on me that day.
“If it had been an inch further over, I wouldn’t be here. I honestly don’t know how I survived it.”
Rowe says “deep down, I knew how bad the injury was” as she embarked on a gruelling recovery journey during which she was unable to walk for a year and endured “10 or 12 operations”.
“It was very difficult,” she says. “I was living with my parents at the time because I couldn’t do a lot for myself.
“My parents were very supportive, I swam in the outdoor pool in Stonehaven every day, I rode on a turbo trainer with a piece of skirting board as a pedal, all sorts of innovations I could.
“I just took it in my stride. It was a new challenge ahead and I took each day of physio and each day of learning to walk again – that was my goal.”
Having gone from the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows, did Rowe believe her cycling career was finished, or did she think she could complete a remarkable comeback by competing once again?
“I always hoped I would ride again,” she states. “I worked hard to ride again – I rode again, I never raced again.
“The Olympics was the last race I ever did. I was never able to get back to training because of the limitations in the movement of the ankle.
“I tell people now, ‘enjoy it while you are doing it because you never know what is round the corner’. I didn’t dwell on it – I just moved on.
“Riding my bike outside was everything to me, that was my goal. The racing was the icing on the cake that I never quite got, but riding a bike again was the ultimate goal.”