Wednesday 24th February 1999
This afternoon a group of ten club and international oarsmen from Henley-on-Thames broke the erg world record for 100,000 metres on a Concept II machine.
This particular team challenge was introduced by Concept II in July of 1997, and the previous record, set by Nottingham University, stoood at just over five hours. Leander's team sliced eighteen minutes off this time at the River and Rowing Museum by rowing very sharp shifts with an ultra-rapid changeover.
The world record team consisted of James Cracknell, Matthew Pinsent, Ed Coode, Luka Grubor, Richard Hamilton, Steve Williams, Fred Scarlett, Kingsley Poole, David Bushnell, and Pete Gardner: a good mixture of winners from the Olympics and Worlds, via Henley Royal Regatta and the Boat Race, to domestic regattas and the Doggetts Coat and Badge. The oarsmen rowed one minute each for the bulk of theattempt, and then for the last 10 kilometres rowed 30 seconds each as the effort began to take its toll. They finished in a slick 4 hours, 44.32 minutes, an average split of 1:25.36, with many individual pieces hitting even lower splits.
As Jurgen Grobler, the Leander/GB coach, commented, "well, they didn't have Steve (Redgrave) or Ben (Hunt-Davis), so we will see": clearly a further record isn't completely beyond possibility. Tim Foster is also still out after his Christmas back operation, and the latest news is that his movements are returning fast: serious rowing training may be possible in a few months. At any rate, a good erg tug for the Red Nose fund-raising effort will have come as a welcome break from winter training, and the team raised nearly £6,000 into the bargain.