Background
Lily van den Broecke was born on 8 January 1992 in Lambeth, England.
Lily van den Broecke was born on 8 January 1992 in Lambeth, England.
She began rowing when she attended Headington School, Oxford.
She is 1.64 metres (5 ft 5 in) tall and weighs 50 kilograms (110 lb). She went to primary school at Street Thomas" Civil Engineering in Winchelsea East sussex and moved to Oxford for secondary school. She is a student at Durham University, belonging to University College, Durham more commonly known as Castle.
Lily is studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
After competing in sculling for four years she tried out as a cox. In 2009 she coxed the junior women"s eight crew to fourth place at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival and a gold medal at the Coupe de la Jeunesse in Vichy, France.
This was the first ever junior women"s gold medal for the Great Britain Team. In 2011 she competed at the at World Championships held at Lake Bled, Bled, Slovenia.
They completed the one kilometre course in a time of three minutes, 27.10 seconds, finishing nearly five seconds ahead of runners-up Canada.
The result qualified a boat for Great Britain into the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London. The crew repeated their gold medal result at the Munich World Cup event in 2012. She was selected to cox the crew of Pamela Relph, Naomi Riches, James Roe and David Smith in the mixed coxed four event for Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.
In 2010 she won a gold medal coxing the junior women"s eight at the World Junior Championships in Račice, Czechoslovakian Republic. She won a gold medal in the LTAMix4+ event coxing a crew of Pam Relph, Naomi Riches, James Roe and David Smith. The event took place between 31 August and 2 September at Eton Dorney in Buckinghamshire, and the Great Britain crew won the gold medal.
She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to rowing and Paralympic sport.
