SPORT SPECIFIC - ROWING Q&A
GREG SEARLE
1992 Olympic gold medallist Greg Searle has come out of retirement in a bid to win gold at the 2012 London Olympics. He talks to Kate Cracknell about the challenges of a sporting comeback
Why did you retire and what made you decide to come back? Rowing’s a wonderful sport that I’d really enjoyed in my teens and my twenties, but by the age of 28 I wanted to move into having a career and a normal life. I became a professional sailor for a couple of years, sailing in the Americas Cup, before starting to work at Lane4 Management Group, a company set up by Adrian Moorhouse [the former Olympic swimming gold medallist] to take concepts from sport – mental toughness, teamwork and so on – into businesses. However, last year I went to the World Rowing Champion-
ships as a commentator and I had one of those life-defining moments. Seeing the competition up close made me ask myself if I was still capable. I did the sort of exercise that Lane4 would do with an organisation: what’s your vision, where do you want to be three years from now? And I decided where I want- ed to be was winning an Olympic gold medal. Working back from that, I realised I needed to start training immediately. It’s been a story of continual challenge, meeting each hurdle
as it comes along, right up to today when I’m sitting at the six seat in the middle of the Great Britain eight, preparing for the World Championships in New Zealand this month.
Is the set-up different now? It used to be that you rowed first and foremost for your local club rather than for the GB squad, which meant there was a
constant power struggle that I think was destructive to British rowing. What I’ve come back to is a more centralised system where we all row as Great Britain all the time, training togeth- er at the GB facility in Caversham. The person I look up to as my main coach is Jurgen Grobler, head coach of British Rowing. We also train full-time now. Before, the boats I was in tended
to peak late in the season, perhaps because I was trying to juggle rowing with work; it was only later in the year that we went on proper training camps and fully focused on rowing. If I had my time again, I’d probably be more professional throughout the year; then I think those World and Olympic sil- vers and bronzes could have been golds.
How do standards compare with before? In Lucerne this year, all six of the men’s heavyweight boats – pair, four, eight, single, double, quad – got a medal. That’s a very high standard and the best we’ve ever performed across the board. We now want to build on that towards 2012, so there’s a higher level of challenge and expectation than there was before, but there’s also more support. That combination – a strong vision and the support to help you achieve it – leads to peak performance.
Do you feel differently this time? Nowadays, I’m happy to trust Jurgen’s judgment, whereas 10 years ago I’d have been trying to force his hand and dictate not
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