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!

‘... 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.

Rule Britannia

The British Four leads Australia and the Unites States at 1,750 metres.

After having returning from Eton Dorney, HTBS’s Tim Koch gives here an euphoric report,

It is said that you should never post anything on the Internet when you are angry or drunk. As I write this, having just returned from the final day of the Olympic Regatta at Dorney Lake, I am very far from angry but I am drunk – not from alcohol but from the success of British Rowing. Readers not from these islands will have to forgive the parochial nature of this report but the last four days of rowing finals have been rather exciting for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Where to start?

WLwt2x – Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hoshing.

All of the 47 strong GB Squad reached the finals. British rowers and scullers have won four golds, two silvers and three bronzes – a new record for a modern Olympic regatta. View the 2012 rowing medal table here (but also the 1908 medal table here).

Until this week British female rowers have never won gold at any Olympics  - now they have changed this record by winning not one, not two but three events. The double scull of Watkins and Grainger and the pair of Glover and Stanning were ‘expected’ to win but the lightweight double of Hosking and Copeland was more of a surprise (especially to them, I think).

The great ‘needle match’ between the old rivals Australia and the British men’s heavy weight four resulted in the fourth win in four Olympics for the Brits. It was also coach Jürgen Gröbler’s ninth gold in nine Games, three for East Germany and six for Britain, a remarkable record.

Miraslava Knapkova winning the Women’s Sculls.

It is true that there have been a couple of ‘disappointments’ for the home crowd, but it is a mark of the ridiculously high standards that British rowing supporters now have that two silvers are regarded as below expectations. These came in the men’s lightweight doubles and men’s lightweight fours, two races that were both lost to the British crews in the closing seconds. It could so easily have been six victories for a country that did not win any events in the Olympic Regattas of 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980!

In his closing speech, Denis Oswald, the President of FISA, the International Rowing Federation, said that the 2012 London Olympic Regatta was the ‘best ever’ for four reasons. These were the standard of the competitors, the excellence of the organisation and the volunteers, the Eton Dorney venue itself and finally ‘the wonderful crowd, cheering and loving our sport’. Well said. Rio has a very tough act to follow.

Ready to go…

The four flags.

The remarkable 2,000-metre zip wire carrying the overhead TV camera. No camera has covered the whole length of the course before.

Soulmaz Abbasiazad of Iran in the W1x D Final. The Games are taking place during Ramadan.

The British Four leads Australia and the Unites States at 1,750 metres.

M4- Stroke Andrew Triggs-Hodge called the row a masterpiece but added that it has been utterly terrifying.

What it is all about – Knapkova’s gold medal.

MLwt2x – The Danes Rasmussen and Quist start to move in on the British double of Purchase and Hunter.

These charming supporters of Team GB are members of Leander.

You could be forgiven for thinking that every supporter at Dorney was British, but these, slightly disappointed, gentlemen were from Gothenburg, Sweden.

Men of the Coldstrean Guards recently came back from Afghanistan. The troops, last minute stand-ins for failed private security, undertook their duties with humour and efficiency.

Band of the Royal Marines and a young recruit.

Olympic Rings and British supporters. Earlier there was a marriage proposal in front of them.

(Copyright © text & photographs Tim Koch)