Only measure of success in Rio — medals
From Page 15
She also acts fast against threats of illness, like scratchy throats.
Brittain has four rowing sons, including Matthew, a member of the golden lightweight four who retired after London, and Lawrence, in the heavyweight pairs boat with Shaun Keeling.
Lawrence is a cancer survivor. Two years ago, when his form kept dipping, Danielle had an inkling there was a serious underlying problem.
Tests confirmed her worst fears. In late 2014, she and husband, David, a haematologist, sat down in their lounge with Lawrence and told him he had stage-four lymph node cancer, also known as Hodgkin disease.
He responded well to chemotherapy, despite a spell in hospital with pneumonia, and in early 2015 he returned to the rowing squad, overweight and unfit.
Lawrence was allowed to train only lightly and was under strict instructions to keep his heart rate below 120 beats a minute.
The 2016 model is a different animal.
Off-loading the squad’s gym equipment of around 800kg of weights, 12 rowing machines and two exercise bikes in Tzaneen, Barrow briefly held two kettlebells weighing a combined 48kg.
Then he shouted to Lawrence: “Do you seriously lift both of these together?” “Ja.” “It’s f***ing heavy!” In training later that day, Lawrence swung them as if they were pompoms.
He and the heavyweights eat mountains of food.
The men’s and women’s lightweights watch their diets; they need to be at an average of 70kg and 57kg DOUBLE UP: South Africa’s John Smith and James Thompson in action during the lightweight men’s double sculls final race at the Rowing World Cup on Lake Rotsee in Lucerne, Switzerland, last month
I’m only just learning. It’s been seven years now. I hope I get another four years to put it into practice
respectively in competition.
Smith, tall for a lightweight at 1.91m, admits it’s a struggle compared with four years ago. “Before I would tell my body to make the weight and then go and eat junk food. Now I’ve got to be more sensible.”
A few days before the Tzaneen camp, Lawrence had knocked his rigging, which the oar sits on, against a jetty, pushing it out by 0.4º.
Barrow repositioned it. He carries with him a notebook containing the rigging settings from every training session and race.
He and some of the rowers have yet to decide on their futures after Rio. But the coach is confident that local rowing has a bright future, with the young heavyweights as well as those coming through the under23 ranks, like many of the current senior squad have done.
But Barrow knows only one measurement will be used to determine the success of his programme these past four years — medals in Rio.
Nothing else matters.