THE SPORT OF ROWING Back to Old English Roots One truly encouraging trend in British rowing during the last half century has been the ever-increasing contributions of rowers not a part of the upper class Eton/Oxbridge milieu. Tideway Scullers produced an Olympic Silver Medal Coxless-Four in 1964. In recent decades, British lightweights, mostly ignored by University rowing, have largely come from clubs along the Thames that draw from the working classes. And Steve Redgrave, England’s greatest oarsman ever, went to his town’s comprehensive school. Mark Hunter, Waterman One of the most inspiring recent stories has been that of Mark Hunter, 2008 Olympic Champion in the men’s lightweight doubles. The Independent: “Hunter, like Steve Redgrave before him,7637 is a man at odds with the elitist image of the discipline. Having grown up in London’s East End, Hunter turned his back on the traditional sporting dream of those living within distant earshot of the Bow Bells7638 – success on the pitch at Upton Park7639 – preferring instead to turn to the Thames, where he spent seven years apprenticed as a waterman.”7640 In those seven years, Hunter mastered “every inch of the tidal Thames from Gravesend to Teddington to earn a license to 7637 See Chapter 130. 7638 It is an old saying that if you were born within earshot of the church bells of St. Mary-le- Bow, you were a Cockney, a London dweller with a distinctive working-class accent and dialect. 7639 home stadium of West Ham United Football Club, the neighborhood football (soccer) club which competes in England’s Premier League. 7640 www.independent.co.uk, 18 August, 2008 7641 Neil Wilson, Hunter quite literally in a different class: How East End boy made waves and joined rowing’s elite, www.dailymail.co.uk, July 13, 2008 7642 Wilson, op. cit. 7643 See Chapters 5 and 136. 7644 www.independent.co.uk, 18 August, 2008 7645 Described as a “working class” club by Steve Redgrave in A Golden Age, Poplar, Blackwall and District Rowing Club is situated downstream from London Bridge on the Isle of Dogs across the Thames from the Greenwich www.olympics.org.uk Mark Hunter pilot the launches commuters and tourists take from Greenwich to Westminster Pier.”7641 Hunter: “If my brother Ross, who’s also a qualified waterman, needs a hand on Saturday nights, I still go back and help out.”7642 The Independent: “But rowing was to elevate Hunter to a different world – he would eventually replace James Cracknell as captain of the elite Leander Club7643 upstream at Henley.”7644 Hunter: “As a kid I started at Poplar Blackwall,7645 which is in the East End of 2124
