Multiply the suffering by eight, four on each side, and the pain of yesterday’s finale of the coxless fours cannot be measured on the scale of ordinary mortals.
At the climax of an epic duel with the Canadian crew, the coxless four of Matthew Pinsent, Ed Coode, James Cracknell and Williams crammed so much hope, despair, emotion, time and sheer physical distress into their final, decisive 10 strokes, you feared their boat might sink under the weight. Back home, Alex Partridge, who rowed his way into the crew in the spring and then suffered a collapsed lung just weeks before the Olympics, was an inspirational fifth man, a ghost in everybody’s thoughts. For his ill fortune alone, defeat was unthinkable.
Behind Pinsent, in the seat occupied by Partridge for much of the season, sat Coode, a fringe member of the British squad until seven weeks ago, still burning from the decision to drop him from the Redgrave four in Sydney and the fraction of a second that deprived him of a medal there in the pair. “I don’t know what the ‘over the moon’ feeling is,” said Coode yesterday. “But my feet certainly aren’t on the ground. I kept going for another four years to get this medal round my neck. The race we rowed in Sydney will always have a special place in my heart, so will this one. I’m not sure whether they balance out or not.”
So many circles neatly turned, so many lives fulfilled or fractured by the eight hundredths of a second that separated the defending Olympic champions from the world champions at the finish. The result was so close the officials had to call for a photo. On the water, neither crew dared to believe they had won. “We didn’t know,” said Barney Williams, stroke of the Canadian four. “Then the flags started waving and we realised they weren’t Canadian flags.”
In the British boat, Cracknell’s shout crossed four years’ worth of pain barriers, while Pinsent slumped backwards, Coode screamed and Williams, ever taciturn, barely raised a smile. “Sometimes I think this is exactly what I was meant to do,” said Williams later, “but there have been so many days that have been colossal days, that you think, ‘yes, definitely, this is great’ in the morning and in the afternoon say ‘no way, I’m not doing this again’. But now? Now, this is an all right feeling.”
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There have not been too many in the months since Jurgen Grobler, the head coach, who has seen his crews win gold for East Germany and now Britain at every Olympics since 1972, broke up the pairing of Cracknell and Pinsent last February. The split pitched the top two athletes in the squad back into a four and caused a collision of egos among strong-minded men that reverberated down the summer. Rick Dunn and Toby Garbett, ousted from their seats in the old four — world champions two years before — blamed Cracknell and Pinsent for their demotion.
Relations between the two pairs threatened to undermine the harmony of the whole squad in Olympic year. When the newly reshuffled four did take to the water, Cracknell hurt a rib; in Munich he had a virus. In Lucerne, the full crew was beaten by the US and Canada. “There’s no way the Canadians are eight seconds better than us,” said Pinsent.
But the final blow to morale came the day before the Henley regatta with the news that Partridge, an inspirational addition to the crew, was suffering from a collapsed lung. “That was the story of the season,” said the enigmatic German yesterday. “I had to admit there were tears in my eyes too, for the first time. We have been diving in the dark for so long without anything to hold on to, so to win was very emotional.”
The final promised a duel between two top-class crews. Redgrave said so and everybody agreed.
”With about 40 strokes to go, Steve (Williams) made a call for a push, but I couldn’t really hear it because of the noise,” said Pinsent. “I thought, ‘Okay, let’s just nail it for 30 strokes’. I counted off 30 in my head and looked around and we still seemed to be down. I couldn’t believe it. With 10 left, there was no alternative but to finish it off. I really didn’t think we’d won, but two things were in our favour. One was the surge of the boat seemed right; two, they didn’t believe they’d won either.” A classic drama fit for a classical setting.