TWO Olympians have joined the staff at a York girls school.

Jo Ellis and Gillian Lindsay have joined the team at The Mount School whose former pupils include Oscar-winning actress Dame Judi Dench, the author Dame Margaret Drabble, and BBC Tomorrow's World and Sky presenter Anna Walker.

Rower Gillian who is the school's Director of Sport and Wellbeing, won a silver medal in the Sydney 2000 Games. She and her team won GB’s first women’s rowing Olympic medal.

Gillian has competed in three Olympics and joins The Mount from her position as head of rowing at The Lady Eleanor Holles School in Middlesex. Before concentrating on rowing, she represented Scotland at junior level basketball.

She said: “I am excited at the prospect of helping the girls become more successful in their chosen sports and championing sport and wellbeing at The Mount.”

On retiring from competition, Gillian held the accolade as Britain's most successful woman sculler of all time and has also worked for BBC Sport and EuroSport as a commentator.

Jo, who captained Team GB’s hockey squad in Beijing 2008, is The Mount’s new assistant house mistress in School House. She has a Bachelor of Science in Sports Performance from Leeds Carnegie University as well as a number of high level coaching qualifications in hockey, cricket, football and Olympic lifting and says she looks forward to adding further qualifications through Boarding School Association Training in her new role at The Mount.

She said: “I’m looking forward to exposing The Mount girls to quality coaching and educating them on how to develop their skills both on and off the sports field.”

Jo Hayward, director of studies at the all-girl Quaker school, said: “We haven’t had too many Olympians at The Mount in recent years, and now two come at once."