JÜRGEN GRÖBLER, the Great Britain men’s rowing coach for the past 12 years, is not known for his exaggeration. This is the man who trained the Sydney and Athens coxless fours to Olympic gold medals as well as overseeing the domination of the coxless pairs event by Steve Redgrave and me during the mid-1990s.
It is safe to say that Gröbler is central to the rowing success that Britain has enjoyed, yet he is reticent in public to take credit. He prefers to keep working away behind the scenes on the next gold medal. He is the one cog in the rowing machine who committed wholeheartedly to Beijing in 2008 long before Athens was over.
I have won gold medals at the Olympics to be greeted by him on the podium with a simple hug and a handshake. If pressed, as he was after the epic race in Athens, he will describe it as “really great”. So when I saw him this week, I was genuinely impressed by his vocabulary about the new coxless four: “The four shows good speed and all the percentages are good.”
This was not an idle aside to me, his recent ex-athlete, whom he knows too well. He knew exactly why I had a notepad out. He continued: “Both Dorney and Munich [the two races so far this season] show big, big potential.” This is not faint praise; the most experienced and successful coach in world rowing is genuinely excited about his new charges.
He has every right to be. In the post-Olympic hangover that strikes most rowing teams around the world, the Britain men’s four have dominated the European competition in both their races so far. They won with distance in hand in the first race at Dorney and then, in the wake of some college exams, they won the next round by five seconds. The future of rowing looks almost as good as the past.
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For those who missed them, there were some good performances by Britain rowers in Sydney and Athens and for those involved, almost to a man, we have dined out on them since. Of the Athens combination, only Steve Williams, the bow, has stayed with rowing and was back in training as required in October last year.
After a winter selection period he was joined in the four by Alex Partridge. Alex was scheduled to be in the four last summer but a lung injury forced him on to the sidelines. The third member of the line-up is Andy Hodge, who raced in Athens in the eight that was the tail on the Britain rowing dog. Alex’s injury in the four meant that the eight lost Ed Coode and, to be honest, it never quite regained its momentum. He felt the lack of a final position last year more keenly than most.
Partridge and Hodge are big specimens, capable of producing power and speed almost at will during training and racing. They are both maturing into the brand leaders that rowing needs. But Alex in particular is cautious about the position that they find themselves in, saying: “The World Cups are great, but the main event is the World Championships in Japan in September. I thought last year that I was going to the Games and it went wrong. So only after the worlds are done and won will I start thinking about Beijing.”
The last member of the four is the most surprising. Peter Reed had no part in the Athens Olympics. He has risen through the ranks, fighting off competition from much more experienced men. But he has a military brain that helps his career. Taken on by the Navy to go through university, he has just been given the support to see him through to Beijing.
The Navy obviously sees in him what the RAF had in Rory Underwood, the England rugby union wing, in the 1980s, namely an Armed Forces hero who will, it hopes, be Sub-Lieutenant Peter Reed, Olympic rowing champion. He brings a kind of enthusiasm to the unit that all boats need, someone willing to get stuck in and shoulder the workload without grumbling, a talent that neither Steve Redgrave nor I were good at. Work , yes; lack of grumbling, no.
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In that pairs combination we, too, had a good year after the Olympics, in 1993. It was as if there were men against boys for a while and we could win almost at will. But what we found was that crews filled the gap behind us. This will happen to the Britain four this week at Henley. Quirky and parochial it may be, but Henley can be a showdown of fantastic proportions. This year there will be one race above all that empties the bars of aficionados — Britain versus Canada in the coxless fours.
The Canadians have more reason than most to be in fighting form. Favourites to win the eight and the four, and strong medal contenders in the pair, they were set to be the leading men’s force in Athens. They ended up with only the silver in the four, which has either caused the athletes to leave rowing in disappointment or continue with a passion that a lost medal brings. They will be by far the biggest targets on Britain’s radar this week and the focus of the crowd on Sunday.
A win for Britain will bring a Henley medal, the tag of favourites for the World Championships in September and, of course, a handshake from Jürgen Gröbler.