THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT ties, which give rise to the club’s irreverent nickname, Palace.”6888 Martin Cross: “The Leander Club is as exclusive as any Kenyan game lodge with its membership of Old Blues, Establishment types, fronted up by some of the top oarsmen in the national squad.”6889 Nevertheless, it was quite a comedown from the GDR system. The Observer: “Even then, Britain FISA 1995 Video Matthew Pinsent and Steve Redgrave They repeated in 1980 in Moscow. After that, Grobler became chief coach of the all-conquering GDR women’s team from 1981 to 1990.6885 They won twenty-one World and five Olympic Championships.6886 “After being approached at the World Indoor Rowing Championship in Boston in 1990, Jürgen moved to Great Britain in 1991 to be head coach at Leander Club, Henley- on-Thames,”6887 replacing Mike Spracklen, who had taken over the Canadian program. . Leander Club Daniel Topolski: “The world famous, Leander Club, whose members are required either to have rowed for Oxford or Cambridge in the Boat Race or otherwise distinguished themselves in the domestic and international rowing arena. It is probably the most exclusive rowing club in the world, and the members are identifiable by their bright pink club socks, caps and 6885 Pinsent, p. 49 6886 Redgrave, A Golden Age, p. 150 6887 www.concept2.co.uk was still playing catch-up. ‘There was just the River Thames, some boats and a shed,’ [Grobler] said recently, comparing the British set-up with the one he had left behind, where ‘everything was funded and athletes were regarded as important.’”6890 When Jürgen arrived, the club’s most imposing members were twice Olympic Champion Steve Redgrave, 6’4” 193cm 227lb. 103kg, and his new partner, Matthew Pinsent, a 6’5” 196cm 238lb. 108kg 19- year-old vicar’s son and old Etonian in his first year at Oxford. Redgrave: “Leander is ideally located, just downstream of the 18th Century Henley Bridge, and is a temple of rowing tradition. It has been described as the Lord’s6891 of rowing. It is one of the most famous clubs in the world. The club was born in 1818, when some ‘gentlemen’ set out on the Tideway6892 in a new six-oar cutter from Westminster Bridge. The boat was called the Leander, and subsequently a London club was formed by that name. 6888 Topolski, p. 127 6889 Cross, p. 177 6890 John Henderson, Shock and Oar, The Observer, August 26, 2007 6891 for non-Brits, “the Home of Cricket,” the pitch for Marylebone Cricket Club. 6892 the lower reaches of the Thames affected by tidal forces. The Tideway includes London and its environs. the Pink 1917
