A Visit to Henley RC

BBC Countryfile visited Henley Rowing Club earlier in May this year - no comments necessary...

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!

Reminder: The Boat Race 2013

Watch the 2013 Boat Race live on the BBC on Sunday, 31 March, 2013, at 15:15 BST.  Extensive coverage of the 159th Varsity battle will be available across all BBC platforms. Defending champions Cambridge lead Oxford by 81 wins to 76 with one dead heat.

Watch BBC reminder video here.

Hardtalk with James Cracknell

First broadcasted today, 16 November, on BBC World Service, is a 25-minute interview with James Cracknell, Olympic rowing champion, who two years ago was involved in a bad accident (Cracknell on a bicycle, the other fellow in a big truck). Cracknell survived, but he suffered severe damage to his brain. Hear him talk about how his life is now, please click here.

Hardtalk on BBC World Service with James Cracknell is only on for seven day from today!

Bert And Dickie And Jack

James Frain as Jack Beresford, Matt Smith as Bert Bushnell and Sam Hoare as Dickie Burnell.

By now, no one who is interested in the history of rowing can have missed when the BBC film Bert and Dickie (Going for Gold – The ’48 Games is the title in America on BBC America) is on. But to be on the safe side: it’s tomorrow, Wednesday, 25 July at 8:30 p.m. on BBC One in Britain, and the very same day on BBC America at 8/7 C.

HTBS’s correspondent Hélène Rémond in France sent a very interesting link, ‘BBC News – Entertainment and Art’, which has great information about the film, and also a film clip from the movie and an interview with the actor Sam Hoare, who plays Dickie Burnell. Despite that it’s said that the Burnells were ‘Rowing Royalties’, Dickie was a very humble man.

HTBS has followed this film from the start and we have written a lot about Matt Smith, who plays Bert Bushnell and Sam Hoare, who portrays Dickie Burnell. One character that we have not really mentioned in this film is Jack Beresford, who is played by James Frain. Beresford, who had taken five Olympic medals in five consecutive Games, was not an unimportant figure in the story about Bert and Dickie’s 1948 Olympic gold medal. Beresford became a mentor and a coach for the young Bert and Dickie.

For those of us who know something about the real Jack Beresford, actor James Frain seems to be an odd choice to play the blond Beresford. In an e-mail to HTBS’s Tim Koch, Jack’s son, John, says about Frain: ‘He’s totally unlike Dad in appearance’. John Beresford goes on by saying that at a screening his sister was horrified to see the actor playing her father wearing a brown suit. She said that Jack would never wear such a thing.

All this promises to be an interesting time in front of the TV on Wednesday!

Pay The Rowing Journalists The Big Bucks!

On Wednesday, 25 July, BBC One in Great Britain and BBC America in the USA will broadcast the film Bert and Dickie (oddly called Going for Gold– The ’48 Games on BBC America). There has been a buzz about this film ever since it became known that Matt Smith (who plays Doctor Who) was going to be Bert Bushnell in the film. One of the latest interviews with Smith is found in the British TV magazine What’s on TV. Reading this article, I understand why rowing journalists and correspondents should be paid the big bucks, as they say here in America. (Well, they are not…)

Why, do you ask? Because a rowing journalist would not ask, or spell, a question like this: "How did you get on with the specially designed, two-man skull rowing boats?"

If you still would like to read the interview, you will find it here.

Tales Of Jack Beresford

For those of you who read HTBS regularly, Jack Beresford Jnr of Thames Rowing Club is by now a household name. He is one of the HTBS editor’s ‘rowing heroes’, not only because he was such a tremendous oarsman with five Olympic medals in five Olympic Games, but also because he was a true hero. When he was 70 – and I am quoting myself from my column ‘In this month…’ January/February 2010 Rowing & Regatta:

“… in summer 1969, when Jack was umpiring at the National School’s regatta at Pangbourne, a tragedy occurred that would cast a dark shadow over his final years. A member of the Norwich School eight caught a crab and was thrown overboard. Jack was quickly there with his launch, taking off his jacket and shoes, to dive in. A strong current took them both underwater and the boy slipped away. Jack was picked up by a launch, while the boy was later found dead. [- - -] Not being able to save the boy, Jack took the accident very hard.”

When I was in contact with Jack’s children Carina and John about this tragedy, they both agreed that due to this incident Jack sometime later lost the sight of an eye and his health began to declined. He died of a heart attack on 3 December, 1977.

I ended my little piece in the Rowing & Regatta with a highly valuable question: “…why has there never been a full-length biography written about this great, brave Olympian oarsman?”.

Well, my question still stands, but in 1989 BBC showed a fairly long film about Jack Beresford in the series Tales of Gold (also a book with the same title, published the same year). The other day this part was uploaded on YouTube – thank you, thank you for this cultural achievement! Here it is – enjoy:

'Bert' Proud Torch Runner

Matt Smith as Bert Bushnell

The Olympic torch is right now being taken around Great Britain. One of the lucky ‘torch runners’ was actor Matt Smith, who is mostly known for playing Doctor Who. Of course, for the readers of HTBS, I am sure he will be remembered for his role as Bert Bushnell in the upcoming BBC One film Bert & Dickie (or as the film is called on BBC America, Going for Gold – The ’48 Games). Bert Bushnell’s daughter, Sue, kindly sent me a link to the film on BBC One, but as of now there is not a premier date for the film in the U.K., while there actually is one for the USA, which is on 25 July.

BBC One – click on the characters in the film, descriptions that I found entertaining, i.e. Bert, Dickie, Jack Beresford, Don Burnell (Dickie’s father), Rosalind Burnell (Dickie’s wife), Margaret Campbell (Bert’s fiancé, late wife), and Jack Kelly (Jnr., or ‘Kell’, son of Jack Kelly, Snr).

BBC America

If you would like to see Smith with the torch, click here.

Bert And Dickie - Going For Gold

More about Bert and Dickie, and by Chris Dodd!

While there is no information which date the BBC drama is going to be aired in the U.K., there is a date flying around on the internet when BBC America is going to show this film, which by the way is called Going for Gold – The ’48 Games on their website. The date given is 25 July, but this date is not even stated in the BBC America’s information about the film – please, do not take this date for certain, yet!

On the Rowing Voice blog, Chris Dodd has posted the first review on the film, “Bert & Dickie – a double whammy”. He is very positive, and he writes among other things:

“Bert & Dickie plunges you straight into this world of high hopes and low snobbery. It’s a watery-eyed drama about how Bert Bushnell and Dickie Burnell came to win the double sculls in 1948. By that I don’t mean that it’s soppy; it’s a story of ambition and class that I reckon will touch your tear ducts when the BBC releases it on the box before the Olympics, as it did mine.”

Read Chris Dodd's whole review here.

Chris Dodd On Bert And Dickie, 1948

Bow: Matt Smith as Bert & Stroke: Sam Hoare as Dickie

I think many of us, rowers and rowing writers and historians, are eagerly waiting for BBC’s film Bert and Dickie. Greg Denieffe, one in the crew here at HTBS, pointed me in the direction of a BBC radio clip which was first broadcasted on 5 March 2010, a month after British Olympian Champion Bert Bushnell died. In the slightly more than 4-minute clip, rowing writer and historian Chris Dodd is being interviewed by Matthew Bannister about Bert’s and Dickie’s 1948 Olympic success in the double sculls. By that time, the script for Bert and Dickie was already under way, but the clip is a splendid reminder why the combination of Bert and Dickie was so unique at the end of the 1940s.

Greg writes, ‘Spot the error at the beginning when talking about Redgrave in 1984!’ [Redgrave took his first Olympic gold medal in 1984 in the coxed four – not the coxless four!]

To go to the broadcast, please click here.

Broadcasting The Boat Race

Tim Koch writes,

Eighty-five years ago, on 2 April, 1927, the BBC broadcast their first Boat Race commentary. Read about it here.

A contemporary edition of the BBC listings magazine, the Radio Times, produced a cod ‘Olde English’ proclamation to mark this technological wonder.

Be it known to His Majesty’s Lieges and all Loyal Listeners that on the Second Day of April in the year of Grace One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty Seven a Race in Row-boats will be navigated between Putney Bridge and Mortlake on the River Thames in which eight poor Scholars of Oxford University and a like number of the Clerks of Cambridge will vie with each other in Prowess.

And that all men submissive to Authority may hear the same worthily broadcast; the like of which is a Marvellous Thing and hardly to be believed.

If this is how they reacted to a radio broadcast, I am not sure what they would say to today’s use of twenty-five cameras on land, nine on water, and one in the air sending high definition pictures around the world and with coverage on television, mobile / cell phones and the internet. It is certainly an improvement to the first television coverage in 1938 when there was one camera at the start and one at the finish. The middle of the race was covered by John Snagge’s commentary and a cardboard chart in the studio showing the progress of the two boats.

British viewers can see live coverage of the race from 13.00 on BBC1 and BBC1 HD. BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra’s Boat Race programme starts at 14.00. The BBC website will stream the race as it happens and BBC America and BBC World News will also report live. Other satellite broadcasters are listed on the official Boat Race website. The race starts 14.15 local time, 13.15 Greenwich Mean Time.

For the first time, Cover it Live, will produce Live Text on www.theboatrace.org/live-text.

Sir Matthew Pinsent’s Guide To The Boat Race course is on the BBC Sport website.

The HTBS Guide To The Boat Race is that it starts here…..

(University Stone)

....goes via here......

(Mile Post)

….. and, 600 strokes and 4 miles 374 yards / 6.8 km later, finishes here…..

(University Post)

What could be easier?