Serial medal-winning rowing coach Juergen Grobler has begun work with France’s team after insisting he was “a little bit sorry” to see the poor performance at the Tokyo Olympics of the once-mighty British team he left behind.
Grobler, 75, who began coaching in communist East Germany before a golden 28-year reign at the helm in Britain, has been recruited by France to deliver success at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
His track record is second to none — his best-known charge, five-time Olympic gold medal winner Steve Redgrave, is widely considered to be the greatest rower of all time.
Grobler’s association with France follows his awkward departure from the British setup in August 2020, one year ahead of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games. The German said then he was not prepared to commit for another four-year Olympic cycle.
One British rower, Josh Bugajski, unleashed a tirade against the absent Grobler in Tokyo, accusing him of “destroying” people by lavishing his attention on his favoured rowers and discarding the rest.
“I really enjoyed the time in Britain, I had good support from everybody,” Grobler said last week when he met the media as the French team’s new “high performance executive consultant” at its headquarters in Nogent-sur-Marne outside Paris.—APP
