In it Oxford Brookes University At the Boat Club there are pictures of victories everywhere. On the walls leading up to the stairs and then through the main hall are dozens of photos of crews immediately after triumph at regattas in Henley and elsewhere. This is what boat clubs have always traditionally done: decorate their walls to celebrate success.
But what is remarkable about the Oxford Brookes photographs is how recent they are. Whereas established institutions along the Thames in Putney have photographs dating back to the early 20th century hanging on their panelled walls, at Brookes the history does not stretch back more than a couple of decades. Yet from a standing start in the mid-1990s, it has become the country’s leading rowing club, a centre of excellence that produces the country’s best rowers. And increasingly, female rowers. This year, in a sign of its growing supremacy in the talent development business, all members of Britain’s four-man team and half of the eight-man team in Paris for the Olympic Games They are Brookes alumni.
“We are very proud,” says Henry Bailhache-Webb, the club’s head coach. “The men’s eight team have been world champions for three years running, so they are perfectly capable of winning gold. All four are equally brilliant. It will be amazing, but I must admit I will be a bit nervous standing by the lake when the competition starts. Seeing those lads you have worked with for so long at the biggest competition will mean a lot to me.”
Brookes takes rowing to the next level
When you think of Oxford and rowing, you usually think of the Rowing Regatta. This annual event, in which students from Oxford University race down London’s Tideway River against those from Cambridge, has been a staple of the British sporting calendar for almost 170 years. But the real history of rowing in the city is not at the University, but at Brookes, the neighbouring college which was redeveloped from Oxford Polytechnic in 1993. There they have taken rowing to another level.
While Oxford usually sends rowers to bank races, Brookes trains future Olympians. Indeed, if you want a measure of how the two institutions compare, you have it in the pre-boat race competitions held between crews from Brookes and the two participating universities every year, as part of the build-up to the big day.
“We actually see it as part of our preparation for next season, not just as an aid,” Bailhache-Webb says.
Each year, the Brookes club provides teams to compete against the Oxford and Cambridge A and B men’s and women’s crews. There are eight races in total.
“Let’s just say we haven’t lost many times,” the coach says with a smile. “I think we usually win seven or eight of those defeats.”
In fact, this year there were eight.
“We’re not a bad team,” he added. “Our first eight team has beaten the Dutch Olympic team twice earlier this season.”
It is perhaps no coincidence that Bailhache-Webb’s time at Brookes coincided almost exactly with the club’s meteoric rise to fame. He arrived at the college as a student in 2004, rowing under Richard Spratley, the volunteer coach who was then juggling club organisation with running a construction company.
He was so successful that after graduating he was picked up by GB Rowing, destined to take part in the Olympics. But, while training full-time with Lottery support, he suffered a debilitating back injury before he could be considered for such a promotion. He was forced to retire from the sport. By then Spratley had already received the promise of Jürgen Groblerthen director of GB Rowing, he funded the payment of a full-time coach. And the first one he hired was Bailhache-Webb.
‘The ships can barely see the water’
“We’ve come a long way,” says the coach. “When I started, we only had 40 students in the high-performance program. Now we have 130, plus another 100 who come for fun on Saturdays. You should see it from here – you can barely see the water because of the boats.”
Despite being based in a town on the Thames, Brookes rowers train 40 minutes’ drive down the road from Wallingford, along a stretch of river that provides up to 10 kilometres of uninterrupted water. It is an idyllic location, with its landing stage flanked by a nature reserve. As Bailhache-Webb stands on the landing stage from which her athletes launch their boats, she says that, splendid as it looks, improvements to the facilities are urgently needed.
“We can field eight men’s and six women’s teams in races each week,” he says. “There are too many teams to accommodate. That’s why we have to expand.”
Especially since word has already gotten out about what’s going on at the university. More and more young people are signing up to the university, not so much for the courses on offer as for the rowing. It’s not an easy choice. Once accepted onto the team, students train six days a week, up to four hours a day. It’s a commitment, but the rewards, including a possible Olympic berth, are tangible.
“I actually think 99 percent of the guys who come here don’t think it’s a fast track to the Olympics, they come here to do their best,” Bailhache-Webb said. “A lot of the kids want to go to college. If they like rowing, they’ll consider us because they know this is the place to get the best experience in the sport.”
The path to Olympic participation is increasingly well-trodden. Since 2000, Brookes alumni have won six gold medals and a raft of silver and bronze. And although Oli Wilkes, Matt Aldridge, David Ambler and Freddie Davidson (the four male athletes who will compete in Paris) never rowed together at the same time at university, their former coach believes that what they learned there, under his enlightened tutelage, has created a fearsome mutual bond.
“Many of our boys took the habits they had learned here to the international team,” he says. “Maybe they took away some new ideas as well.”
Whatever happens next month, Bailhache-Webb will be there watching his charges row for their country, hoping to soon put more pictures of triumph on the walls of his boathouse. And surely such a snapshot would be a prime image for Brookes University’s recruitment department to use to decorate its prospectus to attract new students from around the world. After all, it is a story they have to tell.
“We’re going to have more rowers at the Games than I ever imagined we’d have,” he says. “It’s a matter of upward circular energy. The harder we try, in terms of training methods and facilities, the more results we get. We’ve got ourselves in the lead, now we just need to stay in the lead. That’s the challenge. And the fun part.”
