THE SPORT OF ROWING been an element of ‘shoot the messenger’ here. They were chosen to have that conversation by the rest of us.”7557 The meeting, held in Lyons’ room before the van left for practice the following Monday, has been described by three sources, none of whom was present, by Dan Topolski in True Blue, by Stephen Kiesling in The Last Amateurs and by Alison Gill in The Yanks at Oxford. The three versions run the full gamut. In Topolski’s version, Lyons and Hull decisively announced that the team had decided they would not row with Macdonald in the boat and would carry on practicing without him, starting immediately. In Kiesling’s version, Lyons and Hull gave Macdonald the choice of extending the selection process or stepping down. In Gill’s version, “Lyons and Hull were asking for selection to continue and decisions to be explained . . . What was supposed to be a quiet meeting resulted in them leaving the President at home with the harsh realisation that the crew weren’t prepared to row with him as things stood.”7558 Hull: “There is no easy way to tell somebody that you don’t want to row with them. We tried to lead him in a discussion, and explain clearly why we didn’t agree with Saturday’s results and the decisions that he and Dan had made, but he didn’t want to listen.”7559 One might speculate that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes, but the result was that Macdonald surrendered the keys to the van and was dropped off at his home while the crew proceeded on to their scheduled rowing session without him. Chris Huntington: “‘The Rebel Crew’ 7557 Ward, op. cit. 7558 Gill, p. 95 7559 Ibid. that day was scheduled to be coached by Mile Spracklen – unquestionably GB’s most successful rowing coach in the modern era. “We had been begging for the kind of focused, purposeful, hard training that Martin Cross and Steve Redgrave had gotten from Mike.7560”7561 Spracklen: “In January 1987, the Oxford crew arrived at Marlow for my period to coach the crew and immediately went into a room for a meeting. I was aware that Dan Topolski, the chief coach, had had problems with the USA oarsmen who were questioning his programme, but my involvement with O.U.B.C. began and finished with my one coaching period, and I did not know what to expect from the meeting. I waited by the boat for the athletes to appear, anxious to get on with training. Eventually I was asked to join the meeting, where I was offered a chair positioned in the middle of the room. They wasted no time with preliminaries. ‘Who is the better oarsman, Chris Clark or Donald Macdonald?’ I was asked by Danny Lyons. Without hesitation I replied ‘Chris Clark.’ The discussion appeared to have been about whom of the two should be in the crew, and the answer I gave was what the majority wanted to hear. “It mattered little to me who was in the boat: having seen the crew rowing, I thought they could win with either Chris or Donald. I had no desire to be involved with selection of the crew, nor with O.U.B.C. politics, and avoided the meetings that followed, but my abstinence served only to prolong the argument. “Whilst I was happy to support Dan Topolski’s choice of crew, when challenged I was unprepared to back down on what I had said about Chris Clark being the better oarsman. The athletes latched onto this and 7560 See Chapter 130. 7561 Huntington, personal correspondence, 2010 2098
