Sir Steve is Going Downhill

British Channel 4’s winter sports reality show is called “The Jump”, and believe it or not, one of the contestants is Sir Steven Redgrave who, although he says that he is ‘ten years too old’ to do ski jumping, decided to go for it. Yes, his wife called him Crazy!

But, as the newspaper The Independent wrote in an article: ‘Sir Steve, you see, is a bit of a skiing nut. Actually, scratch that: he’s a lot of a skiing nut.’ Read the article here. Training for another discipline, Sir Steve took a nasty fall, but luckily he did not break anything. 

Thanks to HTBS’s Hélène Rémond who sent this video and newspaper article along.

Mike Sweeney will Retire as Chairman of HRR

Mike Sweeney, chairman of Henley Royal Regatta. Photo: Tim Koch.

Mike Sweeney, chairman of Henley Royal Regatta, announced the other day that he will step down as chairman of the regatta after next year’s regatta, which will be the 175th event. He will remain a steward, though. It was also announced that Sir Steve Redgrave was elected vice-chairman of next summer’s regatta. Elected new stewards of the regatta were Olympic champions Mark Hunter and Tom James. Fiona Dennis, who is an international umpire and among other regattas umpired at the 2012 London Paralympic Games, was also elected a steward.

Who is then going to be the new chairman of the regatta when Sweeney retires? In a tweet, Sir Matthew Pinsent, also a steward of Henley Royal Regatta, said that the answer will be found in the key words ‘Sir Steve Redgrave’ and ‘vice-chairman’. So now we all know! Read more in an article published in the local newspaper, the Henley Standard.

The Big Man’s Boat

The coxed pairs final at the 1948 London Olympics. Denmark beat Italy and Hungary on Henley Reach.

Tim Koch writes:

Regular HTBS readers will know that we are big fans of Jack Wilson, Ran Laurie, Bert Bushnell and Richard Burnell.

All four of these men had distinguished rowing careers but arguably the highlight for all of them was winning Gold at the 1948 London Olympics. Wilson and Laurie won the coxless pairs and Bushnell and Burnell won the double sculls. The winners in the five other events at the Olympic Regatta at Henley were Merv Wood of Australia in the single sculls, Denmark in the coxed pairs, Italy in the coxless fours, and the United States in the coxed fours and the eight. While I was aware that Britain also came second in the eights, I had no knowledge of any other entries from the host country – until recently. A young women who is learning to row at my club casually mentioned that she thought her grandfather had ‘won something rowing in the 1948 Olympics’. I quickly established that he was not Bert or Dickie, or Ran or Jack. It turned out that he was in the third of the two man boats that Britain had entered: the coxed pair. Sadly, it did not win and in fact came eighth out of nine boats.

The British entry for the coxed pairs at the London Games in 1948, Walker, Scott and James.

‘Granddad’ turned out to be bowman Howard (Bakie) James, aged 24. Stroke was Mark Bodley Scott, aged 25, and the cox was 16-year-old David Walker. All were from Thames Rowing Club. In round one, they were the second of three but in the repechage they lost to the eventual winners, Denmark. There is an nice interview filmed in 2012 with stroke Scott on YouTube. In it he says that they were given ‘a little bit of coaching by a fairly elderly gentleman’ and the impression is that they were very much an afterthought following Laurie and Wilson, two of the finest rowers of the pre war period, and Bushnell and Burnell, both of whom showed promise (Dickie had won the Wingfield Sculls in 1946 and Bushnell in 1947) and who had the great Jack Beresford as their coach.

The coxed pair is the heaviest of all racing boat classes with only two rowers to carry the weight of the cox. It needs two big and strong people to make it move fast but, like the coxless pair, it is vital that they row in the same way. Two otherwise good rowers who have different styles are unlikely to make it work. This need for total teamwork means that the cox is often redundant as a steersman. There is a story that when Steve Redgrave and Andy Holmes were training for the coxed pair in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, cox Pat Sweeney was sometimes not available so they replaced him in training with a heavy tool box.

The new cox was the quiet type.

In modern times the coxed pair was never a popular boat at club level in Britain – in fact, I cannot remember ever seeing one. At the top level, it was dropped as an Olympic event after the 1992 Barcelona Games – but at least it had a magnificent finale.

The Italian brothers Carmine and Giuseppe Abbagnle were the firm favourites to win the Olympic Coxed Pairs final on Lake Banyoles on 2 August 1992. They were seven times world champions and one of the great crews in rowing history. At 1000 metres they led by four and a half seconds, the Romanians were second and the British Searle brothers, Greg and Jonny with cox Garry Herbert, were third. With two hundred metres to the finish the Searles had moved up to second place but were still more than a length down on the Abbagnles. The BBC commentator said: ‘Surely it’s too far even for the Searles with their finishing power...’ In the next 25 strokes the British pair went from a boat length down to win by half a length. If you could not watch it on YouTube, you would not believe it.

Not just any old fat bloke...

Sir Steven Redgrave, the world most famous oarsman has been out paddling - it did not go that well.... Read about it here.

A Royal Tea Cruise

Gloriana flies the Royal Standard on the bow indicating that the Queen is on board. Photo © Sue Milton.

The tireless Malcolm Knight, a great promoter of traditional rowing, reports on a special event that took place on the River Thames on a hot day last July. HTBS has previously written about Malcolm in our report on the Tudor Pull.

Malcolm writes,

After six months, the plans were finally in place for the most important event so far in the life of the Queen’s Row Barge Gloriana.

The Royal Watermen who rowed wearing their heavy woolen costumes on one of the hottest days of the year.

On 9 July, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the company of the Duke and Duchess of Wessex, the Duke of York, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent boarded QRB Gloriana at Albert Bridge, Home Park, Windsor, to be rowed by eighteen of the Royal Watermen under the helm of HM Barge Master Paul Ludwig for an afternoon tea cruise to celebrate the 60 years since her Coronation.

The Queen’s Barge Master, Paul Ludwig, and Malcolm Knight.

The Countess of Wessex chats to the Watermen. Sir Steve Redgrave, on the right, looks on.

The flotilla of four invited craft, under the control of Malcolm Knight aboard the Gentleman’s launch Verity, moved off upstream to the surprise and delight of other boats on the river. The QRB went up the weir stream to Eton College where invited members of staff and their families cheered the spectacle.

Malcolm Knight meets The Queen. On the right is Lord Sterling, the man who initiated the Gloriana project as a tribute to the Queen on Her Diamond Jubilee. He also provided much of the finance.

Whilst the Watermen took a well-earned breather, tea was provided to the Royal guests by the Waterside Inn after which the QRB turned and returned downstream to moor below Victoria Bridge where the Royal party went ashore.

The Queen and the Royal Party on the deck of the Gloriana. On the left is the Duke of Kent, a cousin of the Queen. Next to him is Brigitte, the Danish-born Duchess of Gloucester. To her left is Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, the Queen’s forth child. In the centre, Queen Elizabeth and a Waterman acting as coxswain. On the right of the group is Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, also a cousin of the Queen. Behind Richard, but obscured by a flag, is Prince Andrew, Duke of York, the Queen’s third child. His other rowing engagement this year in Vancouver, Canada, was also covered by HTBS. On the far right is Sophie, Countess of Wessex, the wife of Prince Edward.

The Queen thanks her Watermen at the end of her day on the river. The Earl of Wessex and the Duke of York followed on behind.

A ‘little piece of history’ was made as it is believed that this was the first time in nearly 200 years that a reigning monarch had been rowed in an 18-oared Royal barge by the Royal Watermen – a memorable day for all of us involved and one that has confirmed Gloriana as The Queen’s Row Barge.

Dame Di Ellis: The First Lady of British Rowing

Dame Di Ellis. Photograph British Rowing.

HTBS’s Tim Koch writes from London,

On 14 June Buckingham Palace published the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2013. These awards ‘recognise the achievements and service of extraordinary people across the United Kingdom’ www.gov.uk/honours/overview and rowing received on of the highest honours. The title of ‘Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ (DBE) was given to ‘Mrs. Diana Margaret Ellis CBE, Executive Chair, British Rowing, for services to rowing’. In more informal terms, Di Ellis has become a Dame, the female equivalent of becoming a Knight and having the title ‘Sir’. She thus joins the exclusive club that consists of Sir Harcourt Gilbey Gold (‘Tarka’), Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Matthew Pinsent and Sir David Tanner. On Twitter, Sir Matthew @matthewcpinsent wrote:

Great news that DI Ellis has become a Dame. One of rowing’s softly spoken heroes.

Dame Di ended her final term of office as Chairman and later Executive Chairman of British Rowing last February after fifty-two years in the sport which included time as an international rower, cox, umpire, official and always dedicated servant of rowing in the UK. There are very few complete lists of the posts that Di has held as she has worked so hard for so long. She became Chairman of the Amateur Rowing Association (now British Rowing) in 1989, and in 1997 she became the first woman to be elected a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta. Di has been Chairman of a large number of committees, including the British Rowing Championships and the ARA Women’s Commission and she has served on the organising bodies of seven world events (including the 2005 World Cup and the 2006 World Rowing Championships) and was part of the London 2012 bid team. She has been a representative to both the British Olympic Association and to FISA.

The Grand Cross Star of the Order of the British Empire. It is impressive even if the British Empire no longer exists.

Other past honours that Di has received include a CBE in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday List (also ‘for services to rowing’), and in 2012 FISA awarded her the Distinguished Service to International Rowing Award. If you have the idea that she is ‘in retirement’, think again, Di is currently President of the Organising Committee for the 2013 World Cup. An interesting recent interview can be read here.

In Di’s time as head of the ARA / British Rowing she led the sport in Britain through a period of enormous and unprecedented change and growth, resulting in a level of international success undreamed of not many years ago. Rodgers and Hammerstein once observed that ‘There Is Nothing Like A Dame’. This may or may not be true but few would dispute that there are very few people like Dame Diana Margaret Ellis CBE.

In an investiture held last April (and similar to the one Di will attend later this year) Helen Glover and Heather Stanning were made MBEs by the Queen following their winning the Women’s Coxless Pairs at the London Olympics. Stanning’s uniform is that of a Captain in the Royal Artillery and she is currently on active service in Afghanistan. The pair intend to defend their title in Rio in 2016. Photograph from Metro.

(Perhaps HTBS readers would allow me to include a non-rowing story about a famous Hollywood actress of British birth who was to be made a Dame by the Queen in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Her ‘people’ telephoned the Queen’s Private Secretary with two questions from the star. Could her security men check the Palace over first and would the Queen wait if she was late? Thankfully the answers were ‘no’ and ‘no’. The lesson here is, do not try and be more Royal than Royalty).

Gold Fever, Episode 3

Here is the 3rd and last episode of the BBC documentary Gold Fever about Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, Steve Redgrave and James Cracknell way to the 2000 Olympic final in the coxless four ~ the road to Sydney proved not always to be straight... Enjoy!

Gold Fever, Episode 1
Gold Fever, Episode 2

Gold Fever, Episode 2

Here is the 2nd episode of the BBC documentary Gold Fever about Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, Steve Redgrave and James Cracknell's way to the 2000 Olympic final in the coxless four ~ the road to Sydney proved not always to be straight... Enjoy!

Gold Fever, Episode 1.

Gold Fever, Episode 1

OK, we all know how it ended, the Olympic coxless four race in Sydney 2000, but it is still from an historic point of view darn interesting to watch the build-up that Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, Steve Redgrave and James Cracknell went through to reach the Olympic final. There are three episodes of this BBC documentary, episode 2 will run tomorrow and episode 3 the day after that. Enjoy!

It could have been Six Games!

Not tired of Olympic rowing history yet?

If not, here is something for you: Did you know that instead of taking five Olympic gold medals in five consecutive Games, Steven Redgrave maybe could have taken six Olympic gold medals at six consecutive Games! How so? Redgrave was actually selected as an 18-year-old rower to go to the 1980 Moscow Games, he says in an interview in the Sport Magazine. However, when the Americans decided to boycott these Games, Great Britain decided to send a smaller group of athletes, so Redgrave was dropped from the team.

Read the interview here.

‘... nobody expects you to win - you are bloody English’

The BBC building on the site of the 1908 Olympic Stadium with the Medal Table Memorial.

HTBS’s Tim Koch writes from London:

The Thirtieth Olympiad has ended. Every host nation puts their own ‘national stamp’ on the Games but perhaps the UK has done this more than most. Continuing the theme of doing things in a British way, it would be allegedly typical understatement say that the 2012 London Olympics went ‘rather well’ and the host nation ‘did not do too badly’. No one was going to beat the United States or China in the medal table so the race was always for third place – a place which the host nation won.

Britain will never better their 1908 record but 2012 is their most successful Games in modern times.

Great Britain also did ‘reasonably’ in the rowing. In what the President of the International Rowing Federation called ‘the best Olympic regatta ever’ the forty seven rowers and scullers of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales all qualified for their finals and again made Britain the top rowing nation with four wins. However, this was not always the case. From 1948 Britain went for 36 years without winning a world rowing title. How did British international rowing make the dramatic turnaround in its fortunes? I would suggest that much of the credit can be given to four individuals.

Number one is the man who, in 1974, uttered the ‘bloody English’ phrase to a squabbling crew – Bob Janousek. In his excellent review of Chris Dodd’s book Pieces of Eight: Bob Janousek and his Olympians, Göran Buckhorn says of British international rowing:

"It might be hard for rowing people these days to understand how our time’s greatest rowing nation, which ‘invented’ modern rowing in the beginning of the 1800s and which has fed rowing giants like Sir Steven Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent, had a two-decade-long ‘down period’. From after the Olympic Games in 1948 to the beginning of the 1970s (with the exception of an Olympic silver in the coxless four in 1964) British rowing had been without any medals and barely made it to the finals in the World Championships and Olympic regattas."

At the end of the 1960s British international rowing had reached its lowest ebb and the Amateur Rowing Association, in a very rare inspired move, invited Bob, a non-English speaking foreigner who was unknown outside of Czechoslovakia, to take charge of the coaching of what passed as the national squad. Top level rowing in Britain was ‘amateur’ in both its true and its derogative sense. Different clubs fought to have their chosen crew to represent the country rather than put the best individuals together. If crews were mixed, their styles were often incompatible. Scientific training on land and water was virtually unknown. There was little money and few facilities. With a lot of time and effort Bob managed to change much of this and the result was that a British eight won silver at the 1974 World Championships and also at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He ended the age of the ‘Gentleman Amateurs’ and the ‘Private Navies’ and proved that British crews could compete with the best in the world.
 
The second person I would credit with turning British international rowing around is Steve Redgrave. Of course, the man who won five golds in five Olympics rowed in crew boats, but it was Redgrave who inspired these boats, crews were built around him and partners had to come up to his level. When an athlete shows that something can be done, others will follow. Once Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile in 1954, within months others did the same and today it is the standard of all male middle distance runners. Steve personified the fact that a British oarsman could be a world beater. Credit must also go Mike Spracklen, Redgrave’s coach until 1988, though he, in turn, was a protégée of Bob Janousek.

Photo: British Rowing

Some people suggested that Steve was a ‘one off’ and that, once he retired, British rowing would cease to be so successful. They reckoned without another non-English speaking foreigner from the Eastern Bloc, a man who has now coached at least one win in each of the last ten Olympic regattas, six for GB, Jürgen Gröbler (on the right). A product of what was then the world’s best rowing nation, the former East Germany, he became Leander’s Chief Coach in 1991 and in 1992 took up the same post with the then Amateur Rowing Association. In the words of BR’s website ‘….since then he has been responsible for an exceptional and sustained period of success on the world stage’. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Simon Briggs noted:

"Gröbler is not exactly noted as a technical coach……. [his] talents lie in manipulating the physical data. He logs every ergometer time-trial, every piece on the water. Then he calculates when to drive his athletes harder, when to taper off their efforts, and when to break the boats up and reconfigure them in a new formation. In his ability to run a fleet, he is the heir of Admiral Nelson."

An honorary knighthood must surely be forthcoming for a man whose record is never likely to be bettered.

The final person that I would credit for the revival of British international rowing has nothing to do with our sport – he is a famously dull politician with an interest in cricket. The contribution that John Major, the British Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997, made to rowing and British sport in general has already been well chronicled in a recent HTBS posting. In 1994, Major approved the establishment of a National Lottery with 28% of takings going to ‘good causes’ including sport and the arts. This was too late to have much effect on the 1996 Atlanta Games and Redgrave and Pinsent brought home the only British gold and Britain was seventh in the regatta medal table. In the next few years however, Lottery money began to ‘kick in’ and the returns were rapid. In the words of Allan Massie: ‘Individual talent and determination were for the first time properly supported’.

Andy Triggs Hodge – one of Britain’s ten gold medal winning rowers.

In Sydney in 2000 Britain athletes won ten golds overall and its rowers were third in the regatta table. In Athens in 2004, there was a slight plateau and Britain got nine golds and was again in third place in rowing. In the run up to Beijing the funding to UK sport was quadrupled to £235m and the 2008 Games saw nineteen golds for Britain and it reached first place in the regatta table. London 2012 brought twenty eight British wins and the host country retained its position as the top rowing nation.

The reverse of the London medal.

UK Sport does not distribute Lottery money randomly; it is done with ‘tough love’. The more successful the sport, the more money it gets, less success may mean less money. Naturally rowing has benefited greatly, getting over £27m / $42m for the Olympiad just past. The BBC website reports:

"No other sport exceeded their (2012) target by the distance rowing achieved, winning nine medals to the six demanded of them.... (rowing) will have few worries about sitting down with UK Sport for its performance review."

The most successful British sports, the elite teams of athletics, cycling, sailing, swimming and rowing, account for half of all the UK’s Olympic team funding.  While two thirds of Great Britain’s sporting teams reached their targets in London, nine sports failed to reach the standard set and will have to wait to see if their budgets are cut.

The BBC says that the Lottery (which of course is a ‘voluntary tax’ as no one has to buy a Lottery ticket) contributed 60% of the funding for Team GB in the run up to London 2012. The other 40% came from the taxpayer – about 80 pence/$1.25 per person. Continuing with British understatement, I would say that this was not a bad price to pay – not bad at all.

A Great Honour For Sir Steve

An uncountable amount of rowers – and non-rowers, who truly understand his incredible achievements – around the world were enormously pleased to see that it was Sir Steve who was chosen to carry the Flame into the Olympic Stadium at the Olympic opening yesterday evening. What a fantastic honour for him, but, also for the sport of rowing.

Of course, it was also very emotional for Sir Steve, he reveals in an article, but also a little disappointing (!). Read his blog post in the Daily Telegraph here.

It was touching that Sir Steve handed the Flame over to some young athletes in a gesture to inspire the next generation to carry on the Olympic idea. There is, however, another side to what it meant to not have an ‘old’ Olympic champion light the Olympic Flame, here.

Then, the opening ceremony in pictures.

Fire And Water

One of the Olympic Torches.

Tim Koch reports from Henley-on-Thames:

Tuesday 10 July, day fifty-three of the Olympic Torch Relay around the UK, saw the turn of Henley-on-Thames, the town that staged the 1908 and 1948 Olympic Regattas, to host the event. Naturally, the river, rowing and rowers played a big part part and HTBS was there. The morning’s activities started with seven lucky Oxfordshire people carrying ‘their’ torch through the town. The torch itself is not handed on but the flame is. Outside of the River and Rowing Museum the torch held by Sir Steve Redgrave was lit and he then carried it in an eight crewed by two young rowers from each of the three local clubs. They were Maddy Wynn-Jones and James Mills from Henley R.C, Johnny Jackson and Natasha Harris-White from Upper Thames and, from Leander, Oli Collinson and Brendan Edwards. A security man made up the eight – though I am sure that Sir Steve can look after himself. Garry Herbert, the man who steered the Searles to victory in Barcelona in 1992, was the cox. The boat then rowed down through Henley Bridge to Leander where an honour guard of past Leander Olympians saw the torch ashore.

The Olympic Flame is rowed from the RRM to L.C.

The old boy at 5 was not putting down much work.

The local newspaper, the Henley Standard rapidly produced a splendid online video of the morning’s events. My only criticism is that they give publicity to another idiot pulling a stunt, here.

The Wokingham Times also produced a nice filmed report, here.

Leander Club

At Leander, a large banner proclaimed ‘99 olympic medals and counting’. In an article in yesterday’s the Guardian, the appropriately named Jon Henley wrote:

“There are entire sporting nations – Brazil, South Africa, Portugal, New Zealand – that cannot boast as many Olympic medals as can the members of this club [Leander]; a staggering 99 of them, including 13 from Beijing alone. And since Leander is supplying nearly half the 48-strong GB rowing squad, 2012 will certainly see the club’s 100th, quite possibly its 110th.”

The Olympic Flame is on a 70-day relay involving 8,000 torchbearers covering 8,000 miles.

More On The Great Spectacle

The most popular blog posts on HTBS right now are the ones about the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. We do not want to stop when we have a good thing going so here are some more about The Great Spectacle.

The Henley Standard published a very nice article about some of the local rowers who took part in the River Pageant for Queen Elizabeth II. Mentioned in the article are the stroke pair in the royal barge Gloriana, Sir Steve and Sir Matthew, but also the former Olympian Guin Batten, and ‘a mixture of Olympians and Paralympians, watermen and injured former servicemen’. There where more than twenty boats from the Henley area that took part in the festivities on the Thames. Read the whole article here.

Earlier today, my fellow HTBS-arian Greg Denieffe also pointed out a marvellous 6-minute slide show about previous water celebrations on the Thames on BBC News Magazine. View it here. Of course, for those of you who has a special interest in the previous Royal River Pageants, in 1919 and in 1953, HTBS posted some film clips on those occasions on 30 May, 2012.

HTBS would also like to remind the readers in and around Henley-on-Thames that there is going to be another River Pageant on 25 June when Queen Elizabeth II visits the town.

Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant

The 'Gloriana' with Sir Steve at stroke on starboard side and Sir Matthew at stroke on port.

HTBS’s Royal Correspondent Tim Koch reports from the River Thames in London:

In the last few months HTBS has posted several items about the Thames Diamond Jubilee Flotilla, the 1,000 plus Amerada of small craft planned to be one of the highlights of this summer’s celebrations to mark the 60th year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Yesterday, Sunday 3 June, two years of planning came together. The main interest for HTBS were the ‘manpowered’ boats, those that were rowed, sculled or paddled. These led the flotilla and at the head of this section was the Gloriana, rowed by Steven Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and sixteen others. The BBC has a nice online report, here.

HM The Queen (in white) arriving by launch. The Queen's Watermen are in red. The Waterman on the starboard side is the Queen's Bargemaster.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh boarded a small launch at Chelsea Harbour and this took them to the Royal Barge which was to take them from Cadagon Pier to Tower Bridge. Usually a ‘Royal Barge’ is something more like the Gloriana, that is a craft rowed by the Queen’s Watermen. However it was felt this was not a practical or secure type of boat for this particular event and the privately-owned charter vessel, The Spirit of Charwell was converted for the occasion. However, even though the Royal Party was not rowed at any stage, they were still accompanied by Queens Watermen. Enough text, with an event like this the pictures speak for themselves.

The Queen's Bargemaster, Paul Ludwig.

The Queen's Watermen in the bow of the Royal Barge. The Royal Standard flies from the bow staff.

Manpowered boats.

More manpowered boats.

And some more manpowered boats.

Even more manpowered boats.

Australian Surf Boats

18-oared gondola

Skiffs

(Photograph & copyright: Tim Koch)

Sir Steve - 50 Years Today!

Though the Daily Mirror is not HTBS's normal daily read, yesterday the tabloid had an interview with rowing celebrity Sir Steven Redgrave, due to his 50th birthday today, 23 March.

Happy Birthday, Sir Steve!

In the interview Redgrave reveals that had he only known that the Olympic Games in 2012 were going to be held in London, he just might have continued to row on a top level, only to have the chance to row on home waters. However, next time he is out on the Thames it is in a kayak. Read more here – and watch a video interview with a very relaxed Sir Steve, who hits half a century today…

Sir Steve Honoured

Just before Christmas, on 22 December, Sir Steve Redgrave, Britain’s greatest Olympian, was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Ceremony. Read more here.

Sir Steve's Greatest Moment

For the fourth part of the series “50 Stunning Olympic Moments” in the Guardian, the newspaper looks back at Sir Steve Redgrave maybe greatest Olympic triumph, his fifth Olympic gold in Sydney. View the article and photographs here.

Branagh, Redgrave & Wallander

On 15 March, 2011, HTBS’s Tim Koch wrote about the British actor/film maker Kenneth Branagh, who might have a new rowing film in the making, The Boys in the Boat, about the University of Washington crew which went to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. I am afraid, I do not have any more information about how that project is going, but I did read an interesting interview with Branagh in the Daily Telegraph the other day. He starts the interview with mentioning Sir Steve Redgrave and ends it with the Swedish police inspector Kurt Wallander. If you are interested in Branagh and/or Wallander, there is some great stuff in the middle of the article, too. Read it here.

To Catch A Cheat

Sir Steve Redgrave reveals in an interview, published by Bloomberg. com, that he is “disappointed” at only getting four tickets for next year’s Olympic Games in London. Two of the tickets are for synchronized swimming and two for basketball. “We didn’t get tickets to go and see things as a family,” says Sir Steve in the interview. Of course, he does not have to worry about the tickets for the Olympic rowing regatta at Eton's Dorney Lake, as he is working for the media and that way will have access to the rowing.

It is a well-known fact that the British Olympic organizing committee, Locog, has run into major problems selling the tickets for the London Games.

During the last few days there have also been discussions in Great Britain whether or not athletes who have use banned drugs in the past will be allowed to compete at sports events, like the Olympic Games. In an earlier interview, Sir Steve said that he wholeheartedly stands by the British Olympic Association’s Eligibility by-law which aims to exclude athletes who intentionally dope from being selected to compete for Great Britain. Read the article by clicking here.

(Sir Steve was talking at a media briefing event on behalf of Prestige Ticketing Ltd, the exclusive in-venue hospitality partner for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.)