Christopher Dodd - More Power - The Story of Jurgen Grobler - The most successful Olympic coach of all time

THE AUTHORS have been rowing correspondents and commentators throughout Jurgen Grobler’s two lives. They met when Hugh Matheson was rowing in the national squad in the early 1970s and Chris Dodd was chasing the squad round the regatta circuit on behalf of the Guardian . In one capacity or another, they have witnessed all of Grobler’s World and Olympic performances. When Dodd’s Guardian colleague Charlie Burgess was appointed sports editor of the new Independent newspaper in 1986 and sought a rowing specialist, Dodd recommended Matheson who had recently retired as a competitor.

HUGH MATHESON’s rowing career began when he fell into the Thames, aged thirteen, alongside the rafts at Eton. He thrived on the challenge of rowing, loved the adrenalin of racing and was hooked. Ten years on he was rowing in the British coxed four at the Munich Olympics, off the pace and finishing tenth.

Following a silver medal in the Montreal Olympic Games and a year off adapting to an unexpected inheritance in Sherwood Forest, Matheson bought a single sculling boat and found that he preferred to be solely responsible for his failures and successes. Having no one else to blame and no one else to claim the glory was the drug, although it left few excuses for a lamentable sixth place after a boat-stopping entanglement with a lane marker in the final of the single sculls in the Moscow Olympics of 1980.

At the Atlanta Olympics ten years later, Matheson became a summariser for Eurosport, an all-sports subscription television channel. This is his first book.

CHRIS DODDhas written about rowing in newspapers, magazines and books since the coming of Janoušek in 1970. His introduction to rowing was as a schoolboy cox at Clifton College, having no talent for cricket. He progressed to the stroke seat of his school’s second eight, a crew that satisfyingly beat the first eight in a challenge race at the end of the season. He stopped rowing after his first term at Nottingham University to edit the student newspaper, which led to a career on the Guardian in 1965.

As a Guardian staffer, his main job was layout, design and section editing in the features department, but he also worked on the sport and city pages. He began writing about rowing at weekends in 1970, covering Boat Races and Henley regattas. He covered his first world championships in 1974 to witness Matheson’s eight win a silver medal, and his first Olympics in 1984 to see Steve Redgrave launch his golden Olympic career in Los Angeles.

Dodd was the founding editor of Britain’s Regatta magazine and FISA’s World Rowing magazine.

In 1994 Dodd turned freelance when his off-the-wall scheme to set up the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames became a reality. He was responsible for creating the rowing collection and library and curating special exhibitions.

Dodd is a board member of the Friends of Rowing History and has contributed to history symposia at the River & Rowing Museum and Mystic Seaport. From 1994 he continued as rowing correspondent at the Guardian until moving to the Independent in 2004.

This is his tenth book (for book details see www.doddsworld.org)

BOOKS BY CHRISTOPHER DODD Booklist Title Page Copyright Dedication Preface Chapter 1 – The Munich Olympiad Chapter 2 – The Montreal Olympiad Chapter 3 – The Moscow Olympiad Chapter 4 – East Berlin Chapter 5 – Henley-on-Thames Chapter 6 – The Barcelona Olympiad Chapter 7 – The Atlanta Olympiad Chapter 8 – The Sydney Olympiad Chapter 9 – The Athens Olympiad Chapter 10 – The Beijing Olympiad Chapter 11 – The London Olympiad Chapter 12 – The Rio Olympiad Chapter 13 – Rodrigo de Freitas Epilogue – Florida Acknowledgements Appendix 1 – The Stasi papers Appendix 2 – Olympic Champions Bibliography Credits Photo Section Index About the Publisher

Henley Royal Regatta (1981)

The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race (1983)

Boating (1983)

The Story of World Rowing (1992)

Battle of the Blues (Ed, 2004)

Water Boiling Aft (2006)

Pieces of Eight (2012)

Bonnie Brave Boat Rowers (2014)

Unto the Tideway Born (2015)

Copyright Copyright Dedication Preface Chapter 1 – The Munich Olympiad Chapter 2 – The Montreal Olympiad Chapter 3 – The Moscow Olympiad Chapter 4 – East Berlin Chapter 5 – Henley-on-Thames Chapter 6 – The Barcelona Olympiad Chapter 7 – The Atlanta Olympiad Chapter 8 – The Sydney Olympiad Chapter 9 – The Athens Olympiad Chapter 10 – The Beijing Olympiad Chapter 11 – The London Olympiad Chapter 12 – The Rio Olympiad Chapter 13 – Rodrigo de Freitas Epilogue – Florida Acknowledgements Appendix 1 – The Stasi papers Appendix 2 – Olympic Champions Bibliography Credits Photo Section Index About the Publisher

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Christopher Dodd and Hugh Matheson 2018

Christopher Dodd and Hugh Matheson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008217815

For Bohumil ‘Bob’ Janoušek who changed the face of British rowing and put Britain’s oarsmen back on the medal podium during his tenure as chief coach from 1970–76.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1 – The Munich Olympiad

Chapter 2 – The Montreal Olympiad

Chapter 3 – The Moscow Olympiad

Chapter 4 – East Berlin

Chapter 5 – Henley-on-Thames

Chapter 6 – The Barcelona Olympiad

Chapter 7 – The Atlanta Olympiad

Chapter 8 – The Sydney Olympiad

Chapter 9 – The Athens Olympiad

Chapter 10 – The Beijing Olympiad

Chapter 11 – The London Olympiad

Chapter 12 – The Rio Olympiad

Chapter 13 – Rodrigo de Freitas

Epilogue – Florida

Acknowledgements

Appendix 1 – The Stasi papers

Appendix 2 – Olympic Champions

Bibliography

Credits

Photo Section

Index

About the Publisher

Preface

‘Neil, you are a world champion. Now go and derig the boat.’

– JURGEN GROBLER

As More Power went to press, Jurgen Grobler was at the start of his eighth Olympiad as Britain’s chief rowing coach for men, the first year of the four-year cycle that began as the Olympic flame died in Rio’s stadium and will end four years later in Japan when he pilots a voyage to the Tokyo Olympics of 2020. In each of the previous seven Games, crews under his personal coaching have won gold medals, including two in Rio in 2016. At most of the world championships in non-Olympic years, his crews have also won gold medals. The pressure has never been greater for a man in his seventies who began his sensational run of successes in a previous life.