Rowing: Redgrave's driving force

Andrew Longmore meets a coach with a serious claim to be the best in the land

Jurgen Grobler is a hard man to please. Not for him the exultant cliches of modern English. Words like "super" and "great" have no place in the idiosyncratic vocabulary of the chief men's rowing coach. OK, in Grobler's language, means pretty damn good. OK also means could be a lot better. "Well done" means not bad, now try this.

This is the context of a little scene enacted after an emotional prize- giving ceremony on the jetty at Lake Lanier last summer. Steven Redgrave had just won his fourth Olympic gold and, in the eyes of the outside world, had rowed his last stroke. Grobler knew better. The pair, the Leipzig University-trained coach and the comprehensive schoolboy from Marlow, embraced. "You are the greatest," Redgrave told Grobler. "No," replied Grobler, "you are the greatest."

Nearly a year later, sitting on the verandah of the Leander Rowing Club at Henley, not a mile from his home, Grobler mused on that moment in Atlanta with a slight air of embarrassment as if he had revealed a sentimental side of his nature he would rather have left hidden. One floor down, in the cramped gym, Redgrave heaved his way towards the first test of his newly formed four, at the world championships in France this week, and towards the distant horizons of Sydney. "Steve is not someone who will say that very often and nor am I. So it was something very special for both of us."

On cue, two fists land knuckles down on the wooden table, shaking the coffee cups. A pair of massive shoulders muscle their way into our conversation. Redgrave towers over his dark-haired coach and looks him straight in the eye. The time for superlatives has gone. Silence. "Ready for the next one?" asks Grobler quietly. Redgrave nods. "Fair enough," he says and stalks off to his sweaty dungeon.

"I am angry with them," Grobler explains. "They have not done the work and if I know that I have to get on top of them or else I lose already. Somebody has to be on top even with the top guys."

There is little doubt who is on top. Pound for pound, Jurgen Grobler lays claim to being the best coach in the land and Redgrave was highly influential in persuading him to come to his club, Leander, six years ago. Grobler, who spoke schoolboy English and had little knowledge of the eccentrically amateur British way of sport, found the move from east Germany a considerable culture shock. But the pull of a broader education for his son, Bjorn, who was 11, and the need to prove himself as a coach outside the megalithic GDR system brought him and his wife Angela to the banks of the Thames and into the intricate social fabric of the Leander Club.

Grobler arrived with valuable data and new methods, but, above all, with a commitment to be the best which matched Redgrave's own. He reintroduced weight sessions, conjuring more power from the two-times gold medallist. "I sometimes compared his weights with my strongest German women," Grobler recalled. "It was probably not the right thing to say, but I did it in a gentle way. I was always working with his competitive instincts."

The change has worked out for all parties. Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and Grobler are unbeaten, Bjorn speaks fluent English and, at the age of 51, Grobler himself says with a smile and a Teutonic rolling of the "rs" that he sometimes feels "more British than the British". More importantly for the future of British rowing at a time of critical change, Grobler has become the single most influential man in the sport, a politician of consummate skill and a coach who has grafted the best of traditional British virtues on to the elitist qualities inherited from the GDR.

Initially shocked by the lack of funding for rowing - and British sport in general - Grobler is unequivocal about the priorities of his sport now that the purse strings of the National Lottery have been untied. Deeply entrenched attitudes will have to change, he says.

"This is a really good time for sport here, but there will be no excuses any more. In the past we could blame everyone, we had no money, no training camps, we were dealing with volunteers. Now it's professional and we have to produce the goods. To do that, we have to focus on the best, we have to find the talent and not be frightened to concentrate on guys who can win the medals, because that is the only thing which will count after Sydney. It's a big challenge because it's still your problem. You feel you have to be fair to everyone."

His latest challenge is to integrate Redgrave and Pinsent with James Cracknell and Tim Foster in the coxless four. The crew are unbeaten and are overwhelming favourites to win gold on Saturday on the Alpine lake at Aiguebelette. Progress is OK, Grobler says. "My job is to win again and again. I can tell Steve 'OK, well done'. I can say he is truly the best when he is finished."