Surely nothing could match the drama of gold four years ago? Surely nobody
could redraw the emotional tableau from Athens or match the legacy of some
very British heroes? A few British hearts on the shore of Lake Shunyi
yesterday might beg to differ.
This win, the third successive Olympic victory by a British coxless IV, was
different in the deed but not the spirit. There was no race-long duel as
there was with the Canadians back on Lake Schineas, yet in tracking down the
Australians stroke by agonising stroke, by finding greater depths than any
athlete has a right to know, the gods of Greece were transposed to the
waters beneath the distant mountains of Yanshang. In some magical way, the
spirit of Sir Matthew Pinsent and Sir Steve Redgrave infused a British IV
which boasted no star names but showed the same star quality.
In the moment of victory, the British IV - Andy Hodge, Peter Reed, Steve
Williams and Tom James - were momentarily transfixed by the enormity of
their achievement. Williams fell back into the lap of the bowman, James,
Hodge lay prostrate in the stroke seat. They were exhausted, more exhausted
than they had ever imagined, but they were delirious too. A brief glance at
the stricken Australian crew showed the flip side of the coin.
“It’s unbelievable what you can do when you have to,” said Williams, the only
one to endure the agonies in Athens. “It was beyond skill, it was something
primeval. It’s not like Athens, this is in the moment. It’s been such a long
journey.
“It’s been a very, very tough four or five months. Every day Jurgen [Grobler,
head coach] kept saying, ‘There is no one who can beat you’ and some days
that was really hard to believe, but we just kept on believing. The last 10
or 15 strokes were absolutely phenomenal. I was in so much pain. I had never
felt anything like that in my life.”
The story of the race was both complex and utterly simple. It was indeed
primeval, a struggle to the very core between the hunter and the hunted. The
British had anticipated an Australian charge off the line. They had reckoned
on the strength of the Australian team, who were on a high after winning two
gold medals earlier in the afternoon. But they had not bargained on their
technical speed and the extent of their early superiority. This was, after
all, a callow crew. On the bank, commentating for the BBC, even Redgrave,
who had bravely pronounced the British crew as gold medallists the day
before, was starting to express doubts.
Deep down, Jurgen Grobler, the brilliant head coach, was also starting to fear
the worst. Australians are not easily rowed through and this Australian crew
had the wind at their backs. So followed three minutes of compelling
sporting drama as the British IV, led by the blond figure of Hodge at stroke
, began to believe once again.
Rowing races happen in slow motion, every bob of the boat’s bow monitored in
freeze frame. The chase is all the more intense for the slowing of the clock.
At halfway, 1,000m, the British crew were a boat length back and the prerace
plan was fluttering in the gentle breeze. At 1,500m, the lead was exactly a
second and a half. But the Australians were showing signs of distress,
barely visible from the bank, but enough to bring hope to their pursuers.
“I don’t know where that last 250m came from,” said Hodge. “I always knew we
had another gear but I never believed we could do that. I have never been in
that pain before. I gave absolutely everything.
“We had to keep our heads and bring out the final gear. At 500m, I could at
least see the stern of the Australian boat. At 250m I thought: ‘Jesus’ and I
just tried to keep calm. I remember thinking vividly that we might not win
this. Then I thought: ‘No, I want to win this medal’.”
No one then was thinking back to Athens, but the spirit was the same. The crew
could easily have settled for an honourable silver. Perhaps they remembered
the coach’s warning. The British coxless IV, the coxless IV of Redgrave and
Pinsent, do not, Grobler once said, win silver, they only lose gold.
Somewhere, either in their team talk the previous night or in the very
unBritish culture of success handed down with the seat, the British crew
knew instinctively what was required of them.
“It was down to how deep they could dig,” said Grobler. “If they had won by
two lengths, everyone would have said how easy it was, but I know what I can
ask them to do and I know over four years what they can do.”
The IV themselves did not know. This was only their fifth race as a quartet
and, though their work in the heats and semi-fi-nal here spoke of a crew in
control, no one had anticipated such a mighty examination of sinew and mind.
At 100m, the bobbing front end of the British boat was level with the
Australian’s bow. The British section of the press box, along with the posse
of British supporters in the packed stands opposite, had long since
abandoned their seats or pretence at impartiality. The race was there to be
won now.
Grobler, not a man for hyperbole, said later that this was the finest 500m
ever rowed by one of his crews, Athens included. There is no proper way to
prepare for it. Courage, obstinacy, trust, respect, downright cussedness
come from within.
“We were really on the ropes,” said Reed. “That is the best finish we have
ever put together - in tough conditions - I am so pleased. Magic.
“I knew Hodgy would keep going and I knew I wasn’t going to let him down,”
said Reed, the naval officer with the straight back and firm spine. “I knew
the guys behind wouldn’t let us down either.”
At 100m, the race was no longer about training, tactics or technique. “It’s
about a huge brain, still sending signals down to the body, not letting
things go even if it gets a bit dark,” said Grobler. “Hold the crew
together, stay together, that’s the By the line, the British IV had
put a chasm between them and the silver medal, all of three-quarters of a
length. Sympathy is not an emotion much encouraged by Australians in sport,
but it was a natural response now. Like the Canadians four years ago, the
beaten crew brought nobility to defeat, though four broken bodies slumped
over their oars would testify otherwise. “We just ran out of steam,” said
Cameron McKenzie-McHarg of the Australian IV. “I don’t think we could have
raced any harder, but it’s all still very blurry.”
For James, the newest member of the crew, there was only disbelief at the end
of a summer of injury and unimaginable frustration. In only his fifth race
with the crew, he has won an Olympic gold, so it was no wonder that his
earnest face betrayed a mixture of disbelief and indescribable joy.
“I was first over the line, but it took a couple of seconds to realise this
wasn’t a dream anymore,” he said. “It’s very emotional, unreal, but I’m
happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I started dreaming of this
three-and-a-half years ago and now it’s happened.”
The British IV have now put a whole six minutes and seven seconds’ worth of
distance between them and their mighty shadows. “The pressure on this crew
was immense,” said Pinsent. “We were a big act to follow and they’ve done
that. It was nerve-racking but I was sure they would catch them. The new era
started when I stopped. I’ve enjoyed watching them but they’ve taken over
the baton today.”
Out with the old, in with the new. The British IV did not just chase the
Australians down the length of Lake Shunyi yesterday, they chased down
history, looked it in the eye and rowed past. “We’ve paid for that with our
souls,” added Williams, a double gold medallist. “Athens was an epic
journey, but it was topped by this one.”
3
Successive Olympic victories by Great Britain in the coxless IV. Steve
Williams, who was a member of the winning crew in Athens four years ago,
collected his second gold medal in Beijing yesterday main message. We
discussed that very well, I told them it’s the last stroke that counts,
whether that’s in the middle of the race or, like in Athens, really the very
last stroke.”
It was a hard act to follow
WHEN the then Steve Redgrave CBE won his fifth and final gold at the Syd-ney
Olympics in 2000, it may have been the end of an incredible journey for him
but it was the start of three successive gold medals for Great Britain in
the coxless fours.
After initially thinking his rowing career was finished when he was diagnosed
with diabetes in 1997, Redgrave returned to win alongside Matthew Pinsent,
Tim Foster and James Cracknell eight years ago, and Pinsent claimed his
fourth gold medal at Athens in 2004 alongside Cracknell, Steve Williams and
Ed Coode in the same event, narrowly beating Canada.
Williams was the only one to return this time around, in a boat that some
observers felt may have lacked the magic touch provided by the illustrious
multi-gold medal winners of the past.
However, with Peter Reed, who can draw in 11.68 litres of air with each breath
- beating Pinsent’s mark - Andy Hodge and Tom James, they were able to
edge just past Australia. At 32, it is not yet clear whether Williams, below
with girlfriend Katie Bradfield, will continue on to the 2012 Olympics in
London, but Reed, Hodge and James are in their 20s, with James - only 24 -
already a veteran of four Boat Races for Cambridge University. This quartet
tasted gold at the 2005 and 2006 world championships and you would not bet
against more.
