R&R September: Olympian Michael Lapage

The latest issue of the magazine Rowing & Regatta arrived in the mail today. As always, R&R looks lovely and this September issue has 72 pages with interesting and well-written articles. In this issue alone, you will find articles about the World Junior Championships, Under-23 World Championships, Adaptive World Championships, World Championships, gig rowing, a new exhibit at the River and Rowing Museum on women rowing, six pages of news, two pages of obituaries, and comments, viewpoints, and British Rowing’s campaign “Explore Rowing”, and much more.

R&R has also started to publish a series of articles on British Olympic rowing profiles eminently written by Mike Rowbottom. First ‘profile’ out was Harry Blackstaffe (gold in the single sculls in 1908), followed by Jack Beresford, Junior, (five Olympic medals in five Olympic Games between 1920 and 1936). In this issue Rowbottom has interviewed the last surviving British oarsman from the 1948 rowing event, 87-year-old Michael Lapage, who rowed in the seventh-seat in the eight which took a silver medal. Just look at that magnificent photograph of Lapage on the cover!

The observant reader of HTBS might remember that Tim Koch wrote about Michael Lapage and his son and grandsons in an earlier entry posted on 7 September, "The Rowing Lapages", which has a rare film clip from the 1948 Olympic eight’s final on the Henley course.