PERHAPS it wasn’t quite as good as Sydney — but not by much. Even if the regatta, which ended yesterday, did not have the global impact of four years ago, when Steve Redgrave won his record fifth successive Olympic gold medal, it has still emphasised the momentous status of British rowing. Four medals, one more than in 2000, continued the triumphs of the Redgrave era to demonstrate the depth of quality in the sport. A silver medal in the women’s quadruple sculls yesterday, repeating the same result in the same event of Sydney, although this year with a different crew, underlined the truism that success breeds success.
The 2004 crew rowed with purposeful control and were closing fast on Germany, who had put out all their most experienced competitors in the same boat. Determined to defend the title they have won at every Games since the event became an Olympic discipline in 1988, their crew possessed a total of 18 world titles among them.
However, the Great Britain quartet of Alison Mowbray, Debbie Flood, Frances Houghton and Rebecca Romero were more than a second faster than their opponents over the last 500 metres to finish in 6min 31.26sec. 1.97 seconds behind Germany. “Today, we filled the tank up with premium octane, super expensive unleaded petrol and made sure we exhausted every bit of it,” Romero said.
“In the first 500 metres, we talked about being there,” Mark Banks, the coach, said. “But we were only one second behind the leaders, yet we were in fifth place. At that point I thought it was going to take a lot of character to pull this round but at 1,000 metres we found our strength.”
Mowbray, a chatty 23-year-old, who studied for a PhD in molecular biology at Cambridge, said that she had four things written on her hand so that she could remember them during the race. They were: relax; hands up (to help with her technique); separate (to remind her to put the blade in the water and drive with her legs); and concentrate. “I started this season with so many things to work on but everything came down to a few on which to focus,” Mowbray said.
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Unlike the others, she will be retiring and said that the knowledge that this was her last race helped to motivate her in training. “As a science teacher, a deadline brings the best out of me,” she said. “I knew that this was the last chance to show what I could do.” She did exactly that, and so did the rest of the crew.