Helen Glover made a winning return to competitive action as Great Britain enjoyed a positive start to life without Jürgen Gröbler on the first day of the European Championships in Varese, Italy.
Glover has three children under the age of three and is attempting to become the first mother to row for Great Britain at the Olympic Games. Reunited in the pair with Polly Swann after a five-year break from rowing, she picked up where she left off.
The 34-year-old has now won 51 consecutive races in the pair with Heather Stanning and Swann, dating back a decade. Glover and Swann won the world championships together in 2013 and that old chemistry was evident almost as soon as they began training together.
This morning in Varese, they led all the way to finish ahead of Greece in a time of 7min 8.91sec, almost eight seconds quicker than Romania, the winners of heat two. The final is tomorrow.
The women’s pair is one of three Olympic titles that Great Britain will be defending in Tokyo this summer, along with the men’s four and men’s eight.
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British Rowing expects to have four to six boats in Olympic medal contention but it has been a turbulent period for a programme that has been in transition since Rio.
Not only did a number of experienced athletes all retire, such as Pete Reed, Alex Gregory, Kathryn Grainger and Stanning, so did the brains trust behind Britain’s extraordinary era of rowing dominance.
Sir David Tanner, the performance director, stood down after Rio de Janeiro but then last August came the shock announcement that Jürgen Gröbler, the chief coach, was moving on just 11 months before the Tokyo Olympics.
Gröbler had delivered a gold medal at every Olympics since 1992 and his crews won 14 world championship titles, turning Great Britain into the leading rowing nation in the world.
At the age of 74, Gröbler was not prepared to commit through to the 2024 Olympics in Paris, although more was at play. Brendan Purcell, Tanner’s successor, also wanted to instigate a change in culture, to create a different, more collaborative environment in which the athletes felt “as supported as they did challenged”.
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The decision upset Gröbler loyalists and there are plenty of those, given his record of gold medal success over 25 years. Purcell believes the “partnership model” will increase Britain’s medal hopes for 2024.
Gröbler expressed sadness when he left that he would not be able to coach the men’s eight to the Olympic Games. “I was sure we could win,” he said.
The eight, coached by Steve Trapmore, the former Olympic champion, gave the first indication into why they had Gröbler’s confidence by winning a strong heat ahead of Romania, with the Netherlands in third and Germany, a powerhouse in the boat class, trailing in fourth.
Under Gröbler, Britain built a dynasty in the men’s four, winning gold at five consecutive Olympic Games. Mohamed Sbihi, the only member of the 2016 crew still active, is back in the eight — but the 2021 vintage started with a bang, winning their heat ahead of Poland by four seconds.
Great Britain enjoyed a total of ten heat wins on the opening day of racing, including successful starts for Vicky Thornley in the single scull; the women’s quad, who finished six seconds ahead of the Netherlands; the lightweight women’s double sculls; and the men’s double sculls.
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All three adaptive crews won their opening races, with Paralympic champions Lauren Rowles and Laurence Whiteley proving once again they are the crew to beat in the mixed double scull.
