I
n a gloomy garage in a Cotswolds village,
surrounded by ancient paint tins, an old
workbench and a Union Jack flag, Tom
George produced one of the sporting feats
of the lockdown. Record in the bag, he
felt five seconds of elation before being
overwhelmed by pain. Then he stepped out of
the door and into the light. “Perfection is
winning the Olympics,” he says. “In that
moment I thought that was becoming tangible.”
If Lowerdean looks unchanged, a haven of old
limestone and verdant hills, the past four
months have changed every landscape. On a
personal level George, 25, was selected for the
Olympics on a Saturday only for them to be
postponed on the Tuesday and him to receive
the Wednesday morning email informing him
selection was null and void.
On a global level, Covid-19 and the killing of
George Floyd have devastated thousands and
exposed societal fault lines. Against this
backdrop sports stars have found their voice and
this politics graduate from Princeton University,
who wrote his thesis on Brexit, talks Donald
Trump and Dominic Cummings, as well as
Steve Redgrave and Matt Pinsent. First, though,
he is back in the garage.
George, part of Britain’s eight-man boat, has
been living at his parents’ home since March
and nursing his Olympic dream on his rowing
machine. Feeling good, he told Jürgen Gröbler,
Britain’s 74-year-old German coaching guru,
about his plan to break the 5min 40sec barrier
for the two-kilometre sprint. Gröbler chuckled
but was encouraging. None of Britain’s rowing
greats had ever managed it. Only seven people
in the world had dipped beneath a mark akin to
athletics’ four-minute mile.
“Halfway through the projected finish time
was 5.40 and I thought, ‘I know I can sprint in
those last 300 metres when you close your eyes
and go for it,’ ” he says. “I had to get there first,
though, and that’s the hardest part, holding it
together when everything hurts. I thought, ‘It
has to be right now.’ There was a weird
calmness. I’d heard other athletes talk about
time slowing down and sort of existing withinthat and it felt like that. At the training centre in
Caversham there’d be everyone yelling at me
but it was just me. It was Saturday morning. My
parents were inside having breakfast.”
The time was 5min 39.6sec. He messaged
Moe Sbihi, his team-mate, a 2016 gold medallist
and the owner of the British record of 5.40 since
2015; Pinsent held it for the previous 11 years.
“Moe said, ‘Fair play, I’ve been trying to do that
for five years.’ It dawned on me that this was
pretty big.”
He walked down the road to stretch his legs
and went back to the house. “How was it?” his
dad asked. “Okay,” he replied before going for a
shower. Not the bragging type, he realised he
had to tell them, but it was only when his
American girlfriend rang that he became
emotional. “Everything I have done in rowing
for five years has been about the Olympics,” he
says. “I’m not there yet but it felt like a steppingstone. Moe held the record and
Matt Pinsent held it and knowing
those guys had also won Olympics
was big. But to follow in their footsteps it
has to be on the water with the guys.”
The rowers are still landlocked. A test team
are going to British Rowing’s centre this week
but the wait continues for the eight. George
believes the enforced exile may help a group
team burdened with replicating former glories.
“I think this can only be good,” George says.
“I’m in touch with the other guys and we’re
pushing each other and holding each other
accountable. There are days you wake up and
think you don’t feel like it, but you don’t want to
let those guys down. Training away from
Caversham has allowed me to find a mental
space. Quite a few guys have PB’d over 2k or the
30-minute test. For a lot of people, lockdown
has actually provided this freedom.”Sport
Setting a British record – in a garage
Tom George used his parents’
home in the Cotswolds to post
a new rowing landmark and
tells Rick Broadbent his focus
is now on Olympic glory
George is only the eighth man to break the 5min 40sec barrier for a 2km indoor rowTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE
If the golden past is not an “albatross around
the neck” he concedes there is pressure. “We
don’t want to be the first group not to succeed,”
he says. Success means only gold.
George can see beyond Olympic obsession,
though, and is glad that during lockdown
sporting figures have spoken up on wider issues.
“Reading some stories and accounts you realise
there is an undercurrent of racism that needs to
change,” he says. “I’ll put my hands up and say I
needed to educate myself better. Seeing an icon
for young people like Raheem Sterling stand up
for what he believes can only be good.”
Rowing may well be perceived as “the
archetypal white sport” with its public school
roots. George lauds the work done by Fulham
Reach Boat Club to debunk that stereotype but
also highlights negative responses to one blog
about diversity. “Yes, you want a meritocracy
but if you create opportunities lower down the
pyramid then the kids will come through,” he
says. “It is possible. Rowing shouldn’t be
confined to such a small group of people.”
As someone who studied comparative politics,
he has watched this summer’s events with
fascination. On the day Trump was elected
president, Princeton, a liberal east coast Ivy
League university, cancelled all lessons. “In
the States, and it is becoming the same
here, the press is militarised and you
are one side or the other,” George
says. “Obama was amazing, but
because he was more central it
radicalised the right and Trump was
the perfect person to come in and
say, ‘Open up the coalmines, climate
change doesn’t exist.’ What Trump is
doing now is not leadership, it’s flip-
flopping between whatever will get him
votes. America is crying out for a centrally
positioned president.” He has just had a
conversation with an American colleague about
whether Trump is encouraging a second spike of
Covid-19 to get the election cancelled.
His thesis was about the UK’s decision to
leave the EU. “Dominic Cummings realised it
did not matter what he said, he just had to
galvanise people. He is very smart but not very
apologetic.” One day George says he may want
to work for a political think-tank.
The think-tank is in the distant future, the
next homemade training session a few yards
away and George hopes he has built something
special in his garage. “I can’t wait to get on the
water again,” he says. “When it is flat and calm
and you get that noise of the boat running
through the water, it is magical.”0.8
Seconds George is away
from the world-record
2km row time of Australian
Josh Dunkley-Smith, who
set a mark of 5min
35.8sec in 201848 2GM Monday June 29 2020 | the times