BackSteve Redgrave | Rowing through
Five-time Olympic gold medallist Steve Redgrave on his new academy in India, retirement and football
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How does a top athlete ensure peak performance in a physically demanding sport over an extended period and then time his retirement to the tee? Quite a few of the world’s greatest sportspersons have grappled with the question with varying degrees of success or failure.
British rower Sir Steve Redgrave, who won five consecutive Olympic gold medals for rowing (plus a bronze) from 1984-2000 and nine world championships, got it right on both counts in a long and glittering career. Hopefully, some of his sporting acumen and fierce competitiveness will be imbibed by the local sports fraternity with his rowing academy at Dasve Lake in Lavasa, near Pune, which was launched on Tuesday.
The academy, which is expected to be up and running in about a year’s time, is not envisaged as a high-performance centre but more as a initiative targeted at the proposed residents of the precinct. There are a few boating clubs in Pune, both civilian and military, and the interest in the sport is looking up since Swaran Singh qualified for the final of the single sculls at the London Olympics in 2012.
The controversial Lavasa project (it ran into trouble with the Union ministry of environment and forests in 2010), planned across 10,000 acres, is also scheduled to have a Sir Nick Faldo-designed golf course and academy, besides academies for football (in association with Manchester City), field hockey (with Hockey Australia) and tennis (with Tennis Australia).
The 51-year-old Redgrave, whose first tryst with the Olympics came in 1968 after his father bought home a colour TV, wears his greatness lightly. He says he was lucky to find a sporting discipline that he was good at. “I enjoyed it, I pushed myself to the limit and as an athlete I came up to it," he said at a conversation during the launch.
There was no particular secret to his extended success in the sport, “just a lot of hard work". Considered Britain’s greatest Olympian, Redgrave said: “After every Olympic win, my mind enjoyed what I had done but then came the question, what next, what am I going on to?". He thought that if he could keep his motivation and drive going, he could better himself as an athlete. And that was the challenge that kept him going on and on. “I got it right five times with four years in between, so that’s pretty remarkable," he quipped.
What is more remarkable is that Redgrave was able to overcome debilitating health setbacks like dyslexia, colitis and diabetes that plagued him all through his career. The last ailment in particular hampered his timings during the trails for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and though he qualified to be part of the team, he told his coach that he wanted to opt out as he felt he was dragging the team down. However, the coach said his experience and motivational presence would serve the team in good stead. And it did. For that reason Redgrave considers the gold he won Down Under as his most difficult assignment though he feels the Los Angeles medallion (1984) was “slightly more special" than the others because it was his first.
On the issue of retirement from sport, Britain’s sporting ambassador was rather circumspect. He confessed that he once told an esteemed colleague, whose performances were slipping, that he should call it quits. The advice was taken, and now Redgrave regrets it was given as he feels that nobody should tell someone else when to go. He therefore finds no fault in Sachin Tendulkar’s decision to keep on batting till he felt his time was up. Redgrave saw him bat at the Oval in 2011 and was most upset that the Indian icon, whom he considers “the best batsman in my lifetime", missed his hundredth 100.
A diehard Chelsea FC fan, Redgrave said tongue-in-cheek that the club owner’s penchant for changing managers at short notice over the last 10 years had brought better results than what “the blues" had achieved in the several decades before. He approved of the return of José Mourinho as the Portuguese gaffer is capable of handling the inflated egos of the millionaires in the dressing room. “He can put his arm around a player and console him or he can kick butt when required," he explained.
As for England’s prospects in the 2014 Fifa World Cup, Redgrave, whose wife Lady Ann is also a former Olympic rower, and daughter has now followed in their footsteps, does not wallow in false optimism. “We don’t have even one player who can make it into a list of the 11 best players in the world, so how do you expect us to win the World Cup?" he asked.
Mario Rodrigues is a senior sports journalist based in Mumbai. He met Sir Steve Redgrave at Lavasa as a guest of Lavasa Corporation Ltd.
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