Rowing: Golden desire unites Cracknell and Pinsent

Britain's Olympic and world rowing champions are contrasting characters, but both have burning ambition to remain ahead of the rest

It is a balmy early spring morning in Henley-on-Thames, not long after sunrise, a good moment for a training-shoe thief to wander along the towpath past the Leander Club. For littering the Leander's wooden landing-stage there are about a dozen pairs of trainers and slip-ons, their owners nowhere to be seen. Flogging them, however, might present our thief with a problem.

It is not enough to say that these trainers belong to oarsmen with uncommonly large feet; they are practically river-going vessels in their own right.

I am here to meet James Cracknell and Matthew Pinsent, Olympic champions in the coxless fours, world champions in the coxed and coxless pairs, and pretty much unbeatable, too, I would have thought, in a my-feet-are-bigger-than-yours competition.

After a while, during which several coxless pairs glide up to the landing-stage and reclaim their enormous footwear, an eight hoves into view.

This is the elite Leander crew, with Cracknell and Pinsent somewhere in the middle, practising for the Head of the River race (which on Saturday, at Putney, they duly won, finishing ahead of the 419 other crews by fully 20 seconds).

The eight clamber out and on the count of three, with an unhurried efficiency born of daily routine, hoist the boat above their heads and march it into the Leander's boathouse. Were it not for the acres of Lycra they are wearing, the fact that the boat is made of fibreglass and worth more than a large family saloon, and the couple of swans on the river, it would be a scene powerfully evocative of Amazonian tribesmen returning from battle.

Anyway, 10 minutes later I am installed with Cracknell and Pinsent in the Leander dining room, feeling decidedly weedy. Cracknell is 6ft 4in tall and indecently muscular. To compound his Olympian stature, he has what appear to be wings tattooed on his right ankle.

Pinsent is a good two inches taller. The three-times Olympic champion – who as of last month is also one of three British members of the International Olympic Committee, rubbing shoulders with, if she stands on a box, the Princess Royal – orders a plate of poached eggs, bacon and toast, which he consumes with near-miraculous speed.

Physically, almost nothing about Pinsent is normal (his lung capacity, at eight-and-a-half litres, is the largest ever recorded in Britain). And yet to talk to he is the embodiment of normality; friendly without self-consciously hitting the charm button, eloquent without obviously enjoying the sound of his own voice, self-deprecating without mock-humility.

Cracknell is friendly too, although by all accounts, including his own, considerably less easy-going. I ask him what it is like to row with a member of the IOC?

Cracknell (laughing): "He comes out with these big brown envelopes every so often. I don't know what they are, he just says something about school fees for my kids. No, it's great for Britain, and it's great for rowing."

Pinsent: "I went to Salt Lake to be sworn in, which was a bit of a shindig. I shook a lot of hands."

Cracknell (in mock surprise): "Do they shake hands in the IOC?"

Pinsent (laughing): "And now my fax machine is running out of paper because the head of the Yemeni Handball Association is sending me congratulations... I'm snowed under."

I ask whether he worries that his IOC responsibilities will impede the defence of his world and Olympic titles? Will he be obliged to spend time in smoke-filled rooms that he might otherwise spend on the water?

Pinsent: "I'm sure it will take me away from training, yes. But I had half an hour with Jacques Rogge [the IOC president] the day after the [Winter Olympics] opening ceremony. I expressed my concern that as an active athlete, and having lost Jan Zelezny [the Czech javelin thrower whose resignation from the IOC, to concentrate on training, cleared the way for Pinsent's election] for the same reason, it would be terrible if I had to step down.

"His answer was: 'The IOC is interested in having you on the podium more than in the committee room. If it comes to the congress [before the 2004 Olympics] and you can't make any of the five days running up to the opening ceremony, we'll understand. Your priority is to your crewmate, your coach, your country.' "

Which must be music to Cracknell's ears?

Cracknell: "I'd assumed that anyway. And the more rowers higher up in the IOC, the better the chances of rowing not being reduced to the status of ballroom dancing."

It can't hurt either, I venture, that Pierre de Coubertin, who started the whole shooting (and running, jumping and swimming) match a century or so ago, was also an oarsman.

Pinsent: "Yeah, and so was Jacques Rogge's father."

Of course, whatever the status of rowing within the Olympic movement, it has never before had so much attention in Britain. I ask Pinsent and Cracknell whether their coxless fours triumph with Steve Redgrave and Tim Foster in Sydney, and the subsequent laurels heaped upon Redgrave in particular, have secured more funding for the sport and thereby helped to ensure that Britain retains its international dominance?

Pinsent: "I think the infrastructure is a lot better than it was. But we'll only know in 10 years whether or not it's worked at grass-roots level. Look at other sports successful at the top end. When Torvill and Dean were at the top, everyone wanted to be ice-skaters. The same was true of middle-distance running and hockey. They all had a blaze of publicity.

Cracknell: "Don't forget curling."

Pinsent (laughing): "And curling. No, I think the Rowing Association has done a lot of good things, but this is just the first attempt to channel all the interest. The question is: out of 100 kids who turn up on a Saturday morning, can we get two crews of eight? And of those, can we get two individuals who are really, really good? If we can, and if we can get that repeated all over the country, then we will produce more Olympic champions."

If not, if the will dwindles, or the funding, or both, then rowing might be propelled backwards (a not-inappropriate image, in one sense) to an era in which television coverage of the sport starts and ends with the University Boat Race.

On which subject, the Boat Race takes place on Saturday and Cracknell and Pinsent will take part in the BBC's coverage. As an Oxford Blue, Pinsent participated three times in the venerable event ("two golds and a silver, as I like to say") but Cracknell did not. He went to Reading University, where as an oarsman he was considered a more outstanding prospect than either Pinsent or Redgrave at the same age, but failed to show the same single-mindedness, and so did not reach the Olympic squad until 1996. And to his regret now, he was not fully committed even then.

I ask whether he was ever resentful of the attention given to the Boat Race? Let's face it, it's a bit of an anachronism considering that there are, more often than not, other student crews better than Oxford and Cambridge?

Cracknell: "Not really. Some TV coverage was better than nothing. And I could have gone [to Oxbridge]. Not straight from school because my grades weren't good enough, but as a postgraduate. I did think about it, but there wasn't a course there I wanted to do."

In what is supposedly a much closer call than in recent years, which boat does he think will win?

Cracknell: "I wouldn't like to say. I've rowed with them both, but three weeks apart. They're definitely both better than last year."

Denied an inside tip for Saturday's race, then, I turn instead to the pair's own prospects, in the World Championships in September and, more distantly, in the next Olympic Games. Their achievement in Lucerne last year – winning two world titles on the same day, by a combined margin of 0.42sec – left even Redgrave awestruck. Are they confident of a successful defence in six months' time?

Cracknell: "Physically, we're far ahead of everybody. But we need to get out of bad habits. We need to find more speed for less effort. The Australians won their national trials in a very quick time. But we can't do anything about that. We have to look within. I think we need to be four or five seconds faster than last year."

Does Cracknell feel the ghost of Redgrave sitting behind him, I wonder? After all, if he and Pinsent get beaten in Athens than folk are sure to say that he is the weak link, that in the Olympics Pinsent can only do it with Redgrave.

Cracknell: "Losing would be bad enough. Nothing that anyone could say would make it any worse. In the meantime, we can do a lot over the next two years to make sure we know, when we head to the Olympics, that we'll win if we produce our best. And that we might even win if we don't produce our best."

I ask Pinsent what their relationship is like, and how Cracknell compares with Redgrave.

Pinsent: "The relationship can always improve, but nothing binds you together like winning. And we are pretty good mates. We've been training partners for the last five years, so it's not like we have to reinvent the wheel. A pair is a bit different from a four in the way you interact, but I look back to where Steve and I were when we started out. We hardly knew each other. From my point of view, James fulfils a very similar role to Steve. He's very...what's the right adjective?"

Cracknell: "Good?"

Pinsent (laughing): "Driven. He doesn't compromise. And I need that, otherwise I would disappear in a ball of my own laziness. The ways we prepare are poles apart. James motivates himself by building up the opponent, motivates himself out of fear of losing. I concentrate much more on our strengths.

"It's a glass half-full, half-empty sort of thing. And we wind each other up. On race morning I'll totally play on the relaxation thing, while he's hopping round the room. He overdoes it too. But that's good, because if we prepared in the same way then there would be less scope for learning from each other."

Cracknell: "And because we room together, if we do have a heated discussion it's very important to leave it by the boat."

Do they socialise together?

Pinsent: "By the time you've spent 48 hours a week in each other's company, it's not like you finish on a Friday and say: 'Right, I'll see you in half an hour down the pub'. "

Right, stupid question. None the less, they are obliged to spend time together away from the water and the weights room. As with Redgrave, their status has provided them with a lucrative sideline giving motivational speeches, which they sometimes do as a pair.

Pinsent: "We did one last week, which went quite well. It's the usual themes: the teamwork involved, the trust you need between you, the fact that you can't win a gold medal without each other, that on a race day you have to rely on him to do the things you're not doing. And all those themes jump straight across from sport into business. One thing people always ask is: 'Do you have to like the guy?' You don't. I've rowed in boats where there's been real friction. It's like in business. You can be landed with someone you hate. But you do have to respect each other, and be totally committed to the same goal."

Cracknell murmurs his assent. Their total commitment to the same goal is beyond dispute, but all the same, it will not be easy staying on top of the world these next two years. Still, if you have huge boots to fill, it helps if the boots are your own.

Coverage of the Boat Race starts on BBC1's Grandstand from 1pm