Like most people I only take any real notice of rowing when the Olympics is on, it is a sport that I regret not having given a go to on a personal level.

Our performance has been utterly woeful and we’ve gone from dominating the previous three Olympics to now finish 14th despite being the best funded U.K. sport at the games.

I wondered why, under head coach Juergen Grobler we’d ruled supreme.

Ahhh......it now transpires that Juergen was forced out last August and the new head man prefers a new age “softer” approach and athletes have “more say” in the way they are trained and their mental health is a massive factor!

Sir Steve Redgrave hit the nail on the head when he retorted that this is all fine and dandy but just expect “softer” results as we fall back to levels of performance we saw in the 70’s.

One of the 8 member bronze winning team ( we normally always win the goal ) symtsyed behind after getting his medal yesterday to catch the eye of the TV stations and accused Juergen of “destroying souls” amongst other things......the other 7 team members vehemently defended the previous coach when asked.

I’d like to bet the one who did the complaining ( Josh Bugajski ) becomes a media darling and poster boy for all this “Nancy Boy” s h I t in the coming months.

It’s interesting that swimming hasn’t yet been infected with this nonsense and just look at the results.

I honestly don’t understand what any athlete would fail to understand about this elite level, it’s going to be painful and it’s going to take extreme sacrifice and pain so if you’re not up to it mentally then don’t stay involved.

I be was a decent runner at the end of my 20’s, any runner will tell you that a self taught 36.05 time for 10k running is pretty damned good and boy did it hurt to get to that.

To get that down by another 4-5 minutes to be at elite county level blows my mind just thinking about it and to chip around 10 minutes of it to get to Mo Farrah’s level is beyond my comprehension.......I’d have loved to have started my running in my early years though just to have had the chance to “hurt” that much because I’ve always had the steel and discipline to train hard.

I fear for our competitive future with idiots like this rower throwing hand grenades around.

The occasional “voice on a stick” like this does more damage than the 99% who fit into the expected regime.