INTERVIEW
A crushing pressure After that result, however, Reed slowly began to notice that his fitness in training was dipping without apparent reason, leaving a man with one of the largest lung capacities ever recorded – almost double the average at an astonishing 11.68 litres – struggling to bring in enough air. “After four or five strokes I just wouldn’t have any power,” he recalls, the memory of the distress it caused still evident in his voice. “Normally I can just crank out anything – ask my body anything and it will have the answers. But I had no answers, and it was crippling.” At first his coach, Jürgen Grobler, thought that it might be burn-out after so many years of constant training, and advised rest. When that did not work he got the doctors involved, starting a long series of tests for every imaginable ailment, from sleep analysis to diabetes to colitis. As the tests got more and more arcane, the dreadful possibility that the illness was psychosomatic – psychology affecting the body – began to loom. For the professional endurance athlete, whose whole career is built on trusting your own body and psyche, this was a terrifying prospect. “You need mental
toughness to go through a race, of course, but this was a different kind of mental toughness. It was chronic, a chronic pressure of what’s wrong. It’s always there. You go into training every single day, lining up against people you know you should be beating and they’re taking you to pieces. Every day you want an answer and you’re not getting it. As the tests come back – negative, negative, negative – the results, just not getting an answer, that’s crushing.” The eventual diagnosis, thanks to
myself on not having any psychological issues and just pushing on and being the tough guy.” Talking to Reed now, it seems
astonishing that only a few months ago he was having the worst time of his career, so confident and assured does he seem. It seems almost comical that such a giant of a man could be laid so low by two chihuahuas, but they had been an important part in the lives of Reed and his wife, Frauke, whom he married after proposing at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. The couple bade farewell to the dogs and cleaned their house in Henley, and Reed’s fitness started returning. The improvement has restored his trust in himself – an integral component in the winning sportsman’s locker. “I’ve just come back, and back, and back,” he explains. “I’m happy now and back to my full strength. I wouldn’t say I’m at my very best at the moment, but I’m back to Pete Reed, the athlete that I have always been proud to be.”
I’m back to being Pete Reed, the athlete that I have always been proud to be.
Reed’s mother’s realization that his father had developed an allergy to dogs at the same stage, came as a relief in some regards. “It’s reassuring when you get something back because up until then it’s ‘Is this in my head, is this a psychological thing?’ I’ve always prided
14
Made in the Navy Reed’s first steps in becoming that athlete were taken relatively late, only coming in his second year of university. Even someone who was clearly born for rowing, with the perfect physiology at around 6’6” tall, had to start somewhere. In his case, this was at a freshers’ fair at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. After discovering his natural aptitude, he was taken under the wing of Fred Smallbone, a Henley steward, who pointed him towards Oxford. Reed was then thrown in at the
deep end, at Great Britain’s final training camp in Austria’s Lake Silvretta before the 2004 Athens Olympics. “It was incredible for me because I had only been rowing for two years and suddenly I was lifting weights with James Cracknell and Matthew Pinsent, and the rest of the boys – the real big dogs of British rowing – and I was there.” This early exposure at the top level stood him in good stead, although he would not step into an Olympic boat for another four years. After winning his second Oxford/ Cambridge Boat Race in 2005, he and Andy Triggs-Hodge surprised many by winning the GB trials, forcing their way into the coxless four which won World Championship gold in Japan by the end of the year. This rise from novice to world champion in the space of three years can only be described as meteoric – and indeed is inconceivable in many other sports. However, Reed is very keen to acknowledge another important influence in those formative years: the Royal Navy. It was at naval training, in the years before UWE, that he was first alerted to his propensity for remarkable fitness, and it was also there that his fierce sense of discipline and dedication were inculcated. “The Navy is so important
to me. Not many people know these days, I’m still an officer in the Royal Navy – I can’t believe it, but I am extremely proud of that, and without them I simply
wouldn’t be on the rowing radar at all. They trained me before I ever got in a boat, and they took me from school, and they didn’t train me to be a rower, but they taught me everything I need to know to be a rower.” Indeed, despite having an enviably
successful rowing career, Reed still calls it a “deviation” from the Navy, and when asked about a possible return his enthusiasm is clear. “Oh I’d love to, I really would. It’s one thing that really bothers me”. Indeed, his respect for his peers in the Navy extends to taking inspiration from them. “I’m extremely
ROW360 // Issue 001
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116