IT WAS a unique honour. Twenty-four hours after being overcome by tears as he collected his fourth successive Olympic gold medal, Matthew Pinsent found himself presenting medals to fellow champion rowers at the Games. Never in the 108-year history of the Olympics has such a distinction been granted and it reflected both the British rower’s exalted status in his sport and his role as a member of the IOC, who preside over such ceremonies.
Yesterday, in an exclusive interview with The Times, Pinsent and his wife, Dee, spoke of their emotions after such a tense year of injury and illness for Great Britain’s coxless four. Pinsent was weeping after the crew crossed the line only 0.08sec ahead of Canada. “I just couldn’t cope with what was going on,” he said. “I was so exhausted and so proud of what we had done. It all came rushing out at that point.”
The remaining members — James Cracknell, Ed Coode and Steve Williams — sang the National Anthem at the medal ceremony. “Their singing was terrible, but it started me off again,” Pinsent said. Meanwhile, his wife of two years, a Greek-Canadian, was almost as distressed in the stands. “I was watching the race through my clenched fists, peeping out through my fingers,” she said. “I could scarcely bear it. At the end I burst into tears, although I didn’t cry as much as Matthew did.”
Dee, a 30-year-old management consultant who rowed for Harvard and Oxford, spoke of her role in the build-up to the final. “We spoke every evening on the phone,” she said. “I would have sensed if there had been any anxiety, but it was only the night before the race that he began to be monosyllabic.
“At Sydney, when we were dating, it was much more unclear how I could be helpful. I was more relaxed this time because, as a wife, I had a clear mandate to be unconditionally supportive.”
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Even for someone as experienced as Pinsent — unbeaten in World Championships and Olympic Games between 1991 and 2003 — the past few weeks have been tense. The crew, hastily recast, yet again, at Henley after Alex Partridge dropped out with a collapsed lung, had a race against time to bind together. “It was only on Friday that I began to get really tense and nervous,” Pinsent said. “I just went quiet and had warned the others what to expect, because I did not want them to worry in case they thought I was choking and was running out of ideas.
“At our meeting that night, Jürgen (Grobler, the coach) was very good, as usual, at pitching the words that he chooses carefully. He was adamant that emotion should not play a part in the race. He did not mention about my going for a fourth gold, or what happened to Ed in Sydney (who finished fourth in the coxless pair) or about Alex. We talked about the way we wanted to row, the nuts and bolts of the technique — a long stroke and to move the upper body back at the end of the stroke.”
Before Sydney, Pinsent had slept well, but here he got only two or three hours and he lay in his bed listening to the BBC World Service on the headphones. He was up at 5.30am, but he had only half a banana for breakfast before a warm-up loop of the lake. “As the crowds began to arrive, the flags were coming out, plenty of them Union Flags — that was nice,” he said. “Then we lay down in a room and tried to chill out.”
Then came the race itself. The Britain four had wanted to be with Canada at 1,000 metres, the halfway point. “That was plan A and that was when we were going to make our move,” Pinsent said. “However, we kept together so, about 40 strokes out, I put in a hard 30 strokes. When I looked across, I couldn’t believe it that they were up. So I put in another ten strokes and we crossed the bubbles (marking the finish line) together.
“I was encouraged by two things. First, that they did not know whether they had won and secondly that, as we crossed the line, our blades were out of the water. This meant that our boat was going at our maximum speed before we put our oars in again.”
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It was not his closest finish. Pinsent and Cracknell won one of their two 2001 world titles by two hundredths of a second, but it was close enough. Pinsent was exhausted, but said that he did not feel as physically tired yesterday as he did after the race in Sydney, when he, Steve Redgrave, Cracknell and Tim Foster took gold.
Two people who probably watched the event with emotions similar to those felt by Jimmy Greaves after Alf Ramsey left him out of the England team for the 1966 World Cup final were Toby Garbett and Rick Dunn. They were part of the coxless four that finished second at the 2003 World Championships, but were replaced by Pinsent and Cracknell. They were, though, effusively generous in their congratulations. “
They were great about it,” Pinsent said. “However, I am sure they were looking at the final and were thinking, ‘That is our final going down the course’.”
The successful Britain four celebrated with their families in a fish restaurant on Saturday night and Pinsent will spend the next week with his wife while working as an IOC member. He will decide whether to continue rowing after he has finished his autobiography and savoured the experience of winning his fourth Olympic title.
“I cannot put it into perspective yet,” he said. “It is too soon, too immediate. It is important that I try to relax because I have to make some important decisions about what I am going to do with my time.”
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How does he sum up his four gold medals? “In 1992, it was inexperience. 1996 was the pressure of being the defending champions. 2000 was getting Steve his fifth. And 2004, was . . . well yes, it was the one that was the most fraught.”