THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT strong. I was good at lifting weights. I used to like lifting weights because I could lift more than anybody else. He stopped me doing weight training, and the theory was if you wanted to be a top sculler, is lifting weights going to make you a top sculler? You’ve got to practice the technique! “If you want to be better at handwriting, are you going to go and lift a weight or go run round the block? If you want to write better, the more you practice it, the better you are going to become at it, and that was very much Mike’s theory.”6137 “During that winter Redgrave and was put in my charge. As Steve was interested in sculling only at that time, Paul Wensley came into the group to partner Andy Holmes in a pair. “There was considerable animosity in [1982-3], the sculling schedule we agreed for me was one hundred miles one week, one hundred fifty miles the next, two hundred the next, then back down again. It was very different from what I’d done before. Intensity of training was decreased, with the accent now in stamina. “Consistency was the key with everything. I learned that it wasn’t about occasional great performances, but maintaining a standard day-in, day-out at a very high level.”6138 1984 Mike joined Penny Chuter’s coaching team in the fall of 1983 to help prepare the athletes for the 1984 Olympics. Spracklen: “Through the autumn of 1983, the squad under the direction of Penny Chuter trained together on the Tideway in London. Soon after Christmas, a training camp was held in Nottingham, at the end of which Penny organised, with input from the coaches, the dividing of the athletes into three squads, one for the eight, a second the coxless-four and a third for the coxed-four. The coxed-four group included Martin Cross, John Beattie, Richard Budgett, Tom Cadoux-Hudson, Andy Holmes and Steve 6137 Redgrave, personal conversation, 2008 6138 Redgrave, Golden, pp. 67-70 the group, with only Steve wanting me as coach. It was convenient for me that Cross and Beattie wanted to row together as the British Coxless-Pair and that Budgett and Cadoux-Hudson wanted to row the coxed- pair, in which they had won Bronze in 1981. I told both pairs that if they were fast enough, I would support them for their event with their own choice of coach. It was a tactic I used to stimulate their training, knowing that each pair would try to prove themselves against the other pairs. I was confident that no pair would dominate and purposely avoided making partner changes. If one pair had risen above the others I would have had to stick by what I had said. “Martin and John’s incessant complaining had a negative impact on the team, but we came together only at week ends, and the negativism was to some extent countermanded by Andy Holmes, who quietly got on with his training, and by Tom and Richard, whose mature approach kept some form of sanity in the group. “Getting the two pairs to prove themselves to each other and to me and with Andy Holmes showing well gave enormous stimulus to their training. They trained at their home clubs during the week and at weekends came together on Thorpe Park, where the course was only 1,500m long. It meant that they were alongside each other every session, which added to the intensity of each workout. “They did work very hard through this period, but the downside was that their lack of cooperation prevented me from giving them adequate technical input. It was not until the crew was formed in May that I was 1715
