Jurgen Grobler Book authors

RowingChat this week is with the authors of More Power, the Jurgen Grobler biography.  Jurgen is described as the most successful Olympic Rowing Coach ever, having won Gold Medals in ten separate Olympiads from Munich in 1972 to Rio in 2016.  Authors Chris Dodd and Hugh Matheson present each four year Olympic cycle and the athletes, races and challenges Jurgen faced and overcame as he built his career.

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Timestamps to the show

01:00 Introduction and background in rowing

3:00 What attracted you to writing this book without Jurgen’s collaboration?

07:00 Jurgen’s one defining quality as a coach is thoroughness – how this shows and how Bob Janousek enabled its establishment in UK rowing.

13:00 Moving from East Germany to UK rowing system was difficult for Jurgen – why?

17:00 How Jurgen builds a squad of athletes over an Olympic cycle.

21:00 Building a squad where the athletes have the ambition to get into Jurgen’s podium crews.  Train hard or drop out.

30:00 What other British coaches have learned form Jurgen Grobler’s methods

49:00 Hugh Matheson – how do you feel about losing a possible Olympic Gold Medal in 1976 to a doping East German crew?

42:00 Leander club had fallen out with British Rowing and didn’t ask the question about East German drug use

50:00 What trade offs is Jurgen willing to make that other coaches don’t?

54:00 What are the flaws in the British Rowing system?

Buy your copy of More Power from the Book People (cheaper than A well-known American website).

Watch RowingChat with Chris Dodd and Hugh Matheson on YouTube

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