Four Men in a Boat
by Tim Foster, with Rory Ross
216pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £9.99
Take the best four British rowers, put them in a boat at the Olympics and a gold medal should follow. It was a formula that seemed to work brilliantly four years ago in Sydney. The British crew, with Steve Redgrave on board going for his fifth successive Olympic title and watched by millions on TV, just held on to record a thrilling win over the Italians.
Redgrave's struggle with colitis, diabetes and his subsequent retirement, saw him pass into the pantheon of British sporting greats. Now just two of that crew, Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell, are left to carry the torch. But as they have found out to their cost this season, creating a winning combination out of four very different personalities is far from easy. In searching for last minute answers, both men could do worse than turn to Four Men in a Boat, Tim Foster's timely and excellent take on how their Sydney crew pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Foster, now retired, was the fourth man in that boat. With Rory Ross providing a helping hand on the tiller, Foster's pacy account begins with the tension of the final countdown to the Sydney final. But Foster's real purpose is to deliver his insights into the complex web of relationships between himself, his coach and crewmates during what often proved to be a fraught and incident packed four-year period leading up to Sydney.
The most telling line comes early on: Foster reveals that, despite rowing with these men since 1997, it was only after their pre-race talk the night before the 2000 Olympic final, that he felt "For the first time we were in the same boat".
Why it took so long is gradually unravelled by Foster. He explains how he was a: "cavalier in a boat of roundheads", not least because of his penchant for late-night partying. It was to lose him the trust of his coach and crew in 1998, when a smashed window resulted in a severed tendon after a drunken incident at an Oxford shindig.
Foster details his own angst and learning that inevitably followed. While it revealed that the crew needed his silky boat moving skills, he knew he had to grow up. Clearly winning back his team-mates' trust was a painful process - even more so when a back operation the same year forced Foster out of the boat yet again.
The following year, they imperiously won the world championships with Ed Coode in Foster's place. Pinsent almost certainly preferred Coode's reliability in place of Foster's precocious talent. But in the end, it was probably the creative tension between Foster and Pinsent which made coach Jurgen Grobler choose Foster ahead of Coode for Sydney.
Pinsent will row in Athens, with Coode behind him, but would not admit to missing Foster. Should they win though, Foster would be the first to celebrate - he knows that getting four men in a boat to win the Olympics is far from easy.
