From civil war to Olympic favourites: Inside Team GB’s remarkable rowing transformation

There is bouncing back and then there is what Team GB’s rowers have done since Tokyo. The miserable regatta that GB endured three years ago has been well documented, featuring six fourth places, no gold for the first time since 1980 and a whole load of acrimony.

Heads rolled in a post-Olympics review as CEO Andy Parkinson and Performance Director Brendan Purcell exited stage left. The messy fallout centred on botched attempts by Purcell to engineer cultural change that athletes simply did not want.

“When the team is 60-odd deep plus staff, can you really please everybody? No,” Moe Sbihi, who won gold at Rio 2016 and retired after bronze in Tokyo, revealed.

“The team sat through so many review meetings that were orchestrated because of how Brendan was trying to change the culture. I want to go back in time and say, ‘I want us to feel rubbish now so that we can celebrate in Tokyo’. The longer lasting hurt and disappointment is what happened in Tokyo, it is not the day-to-day of being pushed hard.”

Pain isn’t just part of the job description when it comes to the GB Rowing Team – it’s on the billboard. Athletes know exactly what they are signing up to and the clarity offered by chief coaches Paul Stannard and Andrew Randell has been welcomed with open arms.

Acerbic Australian Randell has overseen a total transformation in a women’s squad that returned from Japan without a medal. His training programme is infamously brutal, and he has rewired the East German training philosophy of legendary, but controversial, former lead coach Jurgen Grobler.

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Randell says: “I don’t think I needed to change much, just hard work and getting right what I call the NTRs – no talent required. First day, we got a few fundamentals right. The morale wasn’t particularly good, and people were slagging each other off so that all needed to stop – which it did, very quickly.”

The results are there for all to see and hopes are high for a bumper British medal haul at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, with Sir Steve Redgrave tipping Team GB to finish top of the sport’s medal table. This rowing renaissance has been backed by the National Lottery, with the sport having benefitted from £89.2m of Lottery funding since its inception in 1997, delivering 39 Olympic and Paralympic medallists.

Imogen Grant and Emily Craig head to Paris as resounding favourites in the lightweight women’s double sculls, having won 10 successive international regattas and been crowned World Rowing Crew of the Year in 2023.

Helen Glover is the undisputed star name in the team and having made her name in the pair, she steps into a women’s four that finally found its rhythm to win European gold in May.

The demise of the men’s coxless four in Tokyo symbolised the wider mood but a young crew, stroked by Freddie Davidson, have swept all before them since then. Equally, a power-packed men’s eight head to the French capital having won all five major titles in the Olympic cycle. Schoolboy friends Ollie Wynne-Griffith and Tom George are realising their limitless potential in the pair, too.

You can find all that is great about British Rowing’s remarkable turnaround in the women’s quad. A crew that has earned a cult following for their fearless approach to racing, Georgie Brayshaw, Lola Anderson, Lauren Henry and Hannah Scott head to Paris as reigning world and European champions and with a fascinating mix of motivations.

Brayshaw fell off a horse as a 15-year-old and was placed into a coma for days on end, her left side paralysed for a year. Having had her physical imbalance corrected by coaches, she will power the quad from the stroke seat.

“It was a big challenge to overcome, and I managed to do it,” said Brayshaw. “I don’t know who I’d be without the accident, but I am who I am now, and I feel like I can do anything.”

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When she went to watch rowing at London 2012, Anderson saw Glover and Heather Stanning win gold at Eton Dorney and scribbled in her diary, ‘I think it would be my biggest dream in life to go to the Olympics in rowing and if possible win a gold for GB.’

A few weeks passed and embarrassed by her ambition, she ripped the page from the diary and threw it in the bin. Her father Don rescued it, and seven years later, just a fortnight before he died from cancer, gave it back.

“He had belief in me even when I didn’t; I guess that’s what parents have,” said Anderson.

Leicester native Henry bolted into the GB squad with a shock win at Open Trials in 2023, imbuing the crew with spark and energy. Meanwhile, ultra-competitive Scott is the sole survivor from the quad that finished seventh in Tokyo and now has a fighting chance of becoming the first Northern Irish Olympic champion since 1988 and the first woman from the nation to win gold since Mary Peters in 1972.

“The one thing this programme for the women shows is respect for each other,” said Scott. “If you can get a seat in a crew boat now, there are definitely no passengers. All of us have earned our seats and are bringing something unique to that boat.”

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