THE SPORT OF ROWING Spracklen: “My expectations were that the team would be motivated by this result to train with a new determination, but I was mistaken. It did not stop them complaining that it was not necessary to train more than one or two sessions a week. Needless to say, the team was not as strong at the next World Championships. “Miriam Batten and Gillian Lindsay continued to train well in the double after having won Silver in 1997, and they won a deserved Gold in Köln in 1998. “Cath Bishop and Dot Blackie also continued to train well in the pair, and they well deserved their Silver in Köln but despite their first medal, they complained that I had helped the double more than I had helped them, which was why the double had won Gold and they only Silver. “Cath also complained that the Canadian Pair who had beaten them had trained far less than they had, implying that my training was unnecessarily hard, that it was possible to win with less training and that she had no confidence.”7880 1999 Guin Batten: “The Eight had underperformed in Köln, and so between 1998 and 1999 many sweep women left the group. Lindsey and Miriam Batten continued in the double, and Bishop and Blackie in the pair. “Mike asked me to come out of the single to help form a new-look GBR quad with some of the best sweep rowers. The lineup included a young Katherine Grainger, but despite the big erg scores in the boat, we went to the World Championships unable to do the most basic technical drills. It was a bad year for me, and I spent many nights awake worrying about how we needed to improve on the water. Emotionally, I was exhausted. 7880 Spracklen, op. cit. “In 1999, the women did significantly less training than they had in their victorious 1998 year, the cause of which could be pinned down to Mike’s style of using his lead athletes to get visual and behavioural cues on how fatigued they are. “That year, Miriam Batten and Gillian Lindsey both spent substantial time out of training through illness and injury, and so Bishop and Blackie became Mike’s lead athletes at training during the course of the year. “Both Cath and Dot were convinced that less training would allow them to be more successful. I have some sympathy with them, as Jürgen Grobler, who was coaching Redgrave’s four ten miles upriver in Henley, was doing about 10-20% less mileage at a much lower intensity. “The successful women’s quad in 2000 came out of a disastrous 1999 World Championships for the whole heavyweight squad. The women’s pair came fifth, the double and quad each seventh.7881 “The women’s quad secured the last Olympic qualifying slot by winning the B final. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had taken the first step toward Britain’s women winning their first Olympic Medal. 2000 Guin Batten: “In the autumn of 1999 at a training camp in Australia, a meeting was held to review what had happened in St. Catharines.”7882 Spracklen: “At the meeting, I asked the athletes what they thought we had to do to win that first Olympic Medal. For a moment the faces were blank, but Guin broke the short silence with, ‘We must train harder.’ The women had already trained 7881 Outside the Spracklen group, the women’s four came fourth out of five. 7882 G. Batten, op. cit. 2192