Caragh McMurtry: Great Britain rower's neurodivergent journey

McMurtry rowed for Great Britain, at various levels, for more than decade

Caragh McMurtry loves rowing.

"There is that part of pushing away from the bank and leaving your troubles behind," she says.

"When the boat is singing, it just feels right. It is such a satisfying feeling of being connected, being in time with the hull and bending the blade - it almost feels effortless."

Caragh McMurtry hates rowing.

"I can't quite get across how really traumatic a lot of the times were on the team," she says.

"That feeling of being so alone and isolated - that I am doing everything I can to make things right and still being misunderstood and, essentially, mistreated. It is horrific."

Rowing has given McMurtry intense joy and suffocating sadness. It has taken her to the biggest stage in sport and into the inner workings of herself.

She doesn't know quite how to reflect on rowing. But she knows she doesn't want any other athlete to endure the pain that came with the pleasure she found in sport.

McMurtry, second from left, won silver as part of the women's four at the World Junior Championships in 2009

Looking back, with hindsight, McMurtry can see the signs.

As a teenager, she would feel disconnected from others. She would clown around and join in the high jinks, but, emotionally, she was always one step removed; like it was a role she was obliged to play.

Sport was better.

"You are speaking through your actions rather than words - that is how you get respect," she says.

"You are doing something, rather than just existing. There is a common purpose, there is a point to being together - there was so much about sport that spoke to how my brain works and it allowed me to socialise in a useful way."

McMurtry signed up to as many after-school clubs as she could. Gymnastics was initially her favourite. She loved doing flips in the park or walking on her hands. But one summer, she returned and found something had changed.

"The squeaky sound of feet on the floor, the echo and the lights on the floor was so overwhelming. I just couldn't do it any more," she says.

She found rowing when a local club in Southampton brought some stationary rowing machines into her secondary school. The mix of working in close harmony, but entirely individually, chimed with McMurtry.

"Rowing is a sport where you can be an individual within a wider team - you are in charge of your part of the equation but still part of the whole," she says.

"It is very numbers based, it is very methodical, it is very rhythmical - everything is boxed up in neat sections."

McMurtry quickly ticked off those boxes. As a 17-year-old, she was part of the Great Britain four who won silver at the World Junior Championships in 2009.

Rowing worked well for McMurtry and McMurtry worked well for British Rowing. Her talent didn't come from its usual pools.

McMurtry grew up on a council estate. Her home clubhouse wasn't attached to a private school or located in a leafy London suburb. Instead, she rowed for Coalporters in Southampton - a club established by workers delivering fuel to ships and more used to racing in choppy coastal waters, than pristine boating lakes.

She was a figurehead in the sport's attempts to widen its appeal. But, switching into the Great Britain set-up, McMurtry found it hard to fit in.

Some of it was cultural.

"I was the only kid from a state school at those World Junior Championships and I felt it," she says.

"The jokes, the things people would say, what they would assume you know and don't know.

"I was so disgusted with myself when I left - I felt fat, worthless and stupid."

Some of it though, was thought to be medical.

In 2014, as her mental health suffered and frustrations with the Great Britain set-up intensified, McMurtry was diagnosed with bipolar disorder - a condition characterised by fluctuations between extreme emotional highs and bouts of depression.

She was prescribed lithium, lamotrigine and quetiapine, a potent mix of anti-psychotic and mood-stabilising drugs.

"That medication poisoned me," says McMurtry.

"It sounds like an exaggeration, but it is not. There are photos of me that make we want to cry; my skin is all sallow, my hair is falling out, my nails are chipping. I put on 8kg because that is what lithium does to you.

"Quetiapine is the most potent though. If I took that the night before and drove to training the next morning I felt as though I might drive into a bush. The world would be spinning."

McMurtry spent five years medicated; training hard, feeling bad and struggling for selection, before a new performance director - Brendan Purcell - revisited her diagnosis.

He sent her to the newly-established UK Sport Mental Health Expert panel. Their conclusion was radically different. McMurtry did not have bipolar disorder. She didn't need the pills and their side effects.

Instead, she was, is, and always has been autistic. Her brain didn't need to be fixed or tweaked, just understood by those around her.

Autistic people can find communication harder. Or reading others' feelings difficult. Loud noise or bright lights can overload their senses. The inter-personal politics of a workplace can seem irrational and impossible to navigate.

By changing the environment around her, rather than her own brain chemistry, McMurtry found the freedom to exist and perform unhindered.

Together with the panel, she drew up a three-point plan. The team nutritionist was asked to provide McMurtry with bland food, as highly flavoured or spiced options were overwhelming. The coaches were asked to avoid asking her open-ended questions in the morning and to provide a sum-up at the end of team briefings to ensure they had been understood.

The Covid pandemic then freed up McMurtry, along with her team-mates, to oversee their own training, working on ergo machines, weights and agility sessions in isolation.

A set-up that had previously demanded uniformity in approach, as well as on the water, now allowed for more personalisation.

McMurtry prospered. She shed seconds from her times. And at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, she represented Great Britain at the highest level, rowing in the eight.

"I just gave myself permission to be different," she says. "For years and years, I was bending over backwards trying to fit the mould which I just didn't fit into.

"It is about expanding the parameters of acceptable difference."

McMurtry, far left, rows in the women's eight at the Tokyo Olympics where Great Britain failed to qualify for the final

McMurtry, now 32, retired from rowing immediately after the Tokyo Games. But she is still making waves.

She has founded Neurodiverse Sport, a group that educates athletes, teams and sporting bodies about environments that are welcoming and fulfilling, regardless of how your brain works.

"The niche sports and bespoke sports - Strongman, climbing, skateboarding, snowboarding - they have got neurodivergent people, left, right and centre and thriving," McMurtry says.

"They are way ahead. Perhaps they are the ones without such a structured, rigid, tradition-based system, but they are the ones I get positive stories about."

But other athletes are going through struggles that McMurtry can remember and relate to.

Increasingly, teams and organisations are reaching out to her. A handful of Premier League clubs have been in contact. She has done workshops for the likes of GB Triathlon.

British Rowing is one of the organisations looking to improve.

"We are aware that Caragh looks back on her time in the sport with less positive reflections than we would hope for any of our athletes," it said.

"We are committed to discussing how we can learn from her experiences and move forwards together on this subject in the future."

In the meantime, McMurtry has launched a free web-based app for athletes to find self-support strategies and define how they best communicate and absorb information.

It is designed for both the neurodivergent and neurotypical - emphasising that the two categories are not binary, but part of the same spectrum.

In November, her work earned her the Innovation Award at the PLx Awards, which mark achievement in the Olympic and Paralympic performance communities.

On Thursday, Neurodiverse Sport will host a panel discussion featuring former Premier League footballer Greg Halford and former British number one tennis player Sam Smith talking about their lived experiences of neurodiversity in sport.

"Connections are being made all around the country and the world that might just improve someone's wellbeing that little tiny bit," McMurtry says.

"That's what I want - more people to be able to use sport positively like I was able to use it when I was younger."

And rowing? The sport she chanced upon, that changed her life and she has now left behind? Does she regret the day she picked up an oar?

"It's very hard, but the thing is, if I had done a different sport, I wouldn't be doing what I am doing now. I wouldn't be helping a lot of other people," she says.

"I think I'm glad that what happened, happened because it's given me 10 years of personal learning, a lot of personal growth and an ability to talk to a diverse range of people and really empathise with them."

Caragh McMurtry is at peace with rowing.

McMurtry delivers workshops and education about neurodiversity for Neurodiverse Sport, the organisation she founded with her husband