Hodge

Back in July, a friend and I started a podcast.

There wasn’t much agonising about the subject. Not a huge amount of thought went into it.

Lewin and I became friends while training, rowing and racing together for Agecroft Rowing Club when we lived in Manchester.

It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been on the water in years; or that Lewin and I hadn’t been in a boat together for years; or that it was unlikely in my case that I’d ever get back in a boat again.

We found that when we caught up for a chat, despite everything that was happening in our lives and in the wider world, we always ended up talking about rowing: people we’d rowed with, races we’d done, boats we’d been in, rivers we’d been down, training sessions that had made us puke; training sessions that had made our coach puke …

You know …

War stories.

And other stuff - the stuff that athletes and men don’t talk about:

Hopes, fears, dreams, regrets.

The way moving a boat had made us feel.

So, we launched a podcast about rowing.

Broken Oars Podcast: Because Rowing Was Better Back in the Day.

We didn’t plan it.

We just recorded a conversation on Zoom and put it out.

And Broken Oars has been a success.

People are listening to it.

That’s success.

As well as Lewin and I, people have also been on as guests.

Talking to other rowers has been fascinating in itself. Rowing is quite a talkative sport. Rowers tend to want to talk about rowing. But if you’re a competitive athlete - and there are few athletes more competitive than rowers - your focus tends to mean that you think of your boat, your crew, your plans which means you tend to see other clubs as the competition, which doesn’t necessarily prompt free and easy conversation between different tribes. There was also the fact that Lewin and I aren’t famous. We were pretty good club level rowers who rowed for one of the best clubs in the UK in Agecroft RC, but we weren’t Olympians - and podcasting, like documentary-making, seemed to be the preserve not of people who know what they’re talking about, but rather celebrities prepared to put their name to something while busking it on the knowledge front.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find out that other rowers actually wanted to come on for a chat …

What was really surprising was not that our guests wanted to talk about rowing - every rower wants to talk about rowing - but that they wanted to talk about what rowing meant to them. Yes, we found ourselves chatting about the practice elements of rowing: technique, training, crews, drills, mechanics, mileage, outings, sessions, racing, splits, times, tests and so on. If you’re a rower, this is as much a part of the lingua franca as knowing what a diminished seventh is a musician.

But what’s been genuinely amazing is hearing people talk about rowing; what rowing means to them: what it brings to their lives, the experiences they’ve had and shared - and doing so passionately and with love.

And that’s a really important message.

Because there’s a dominant cultural narrative surrounding all high performance sport, and business, and life nowadays: a narrative that says its hard; and that it’s about making yourself harder, and tougher, and stronger; and being relentless, and focused and driven; and being able to take pain and keep going.

And it’s such bs.

Yes, that narrative certainly exists in rowing.

That it’s about pain, and work, and graft, and being relentless, and how much of all of those things you can take.

And, to be fair, there’s an element of truth in it.

Doing a 2k test, whether you’ve walked in off the street or you’re an Olympic champion, is hard.

But rowers don’t row for the pain.

The pain is a tiny slice of a much, much larger and more fulfilling pie.

Yes, to be good at it, to make it look easy, to make it look effortless … takes a lot of effort.

But that’s the same in anything.

There is no high road to the muses.

Rowers row because they find themselves in it.

They row find themselves in it and see themselves reflected in the others that they meet there.

Just like musicians play because they love music, rowers row because they love moving a boat.

It’s joy, in it’s purest form.

Anyway, a little while ago, on our Broken Oars Twitter DM, we got a message.

Hi Guys.

Love your pod.

Fancy a chat.

It was from Andrew Triggs-Hodge.

For those who don’t know, Hodge is a three-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion.

He’s one of the best to ever do it; a lion of the sport; and an absolute joy to watch moving a boat.

But because Lewin and I are rowers, which means we take everything seriously but ourselves, we didn’t believe it was Hodge.

We thought it was one of our mates winding us up.

Because that’s the sort of thing anyone who knows us would do.

It’s the sort of thing any rower would do.

Our conversation went something like this:

‘Hey! Some bloke claiming to be Andy Hodge has just messaged us asking if we fancy a chat. Apparently he likes the podcast.’

‘Yeah. I saw that.’

‘Do you think it’s really him?’

‘You mean like ‘The Andy Hodge’? As in Andrew Triggs-Hodge? Three-time Olympic Champion, five-time World Champion, the best British stroke of his generation - and we aren’t going to argue about this.’

‘Well, Matt was technically the Olympic generation before. Anyway, whoever it is, he’s got a blue tick on Twitter.’

‘Yeah, but he could be, you know, a professional Andrew Triggs Hodge impersonator.’

‘A what?’

‘A professional Andrew Triggs-Hodge impersonator. You know, like a professional David Beckham impersonator or a professional Elvis impersonator.’

‘Right. Reckon there’s a lot of work in that line, do you?’

‘Well, you know … you’re opening a boathouse. The real Andrew Triggs-Hodge can’t come because he’s off being Andrew Triggs-Hodge so you book the Hodge impersonator. After the first glass of champagne, no-one’s going to notice.’

‘You have champagne at your boathouse openings?’

‘I’m Northern, Lewin. It doesn’t mean I’m a philistine or completely unaware of the basic proprieties of life.’

The long and the short of it was that it actually was the real Andrew Triggs Hodge, and our conversation with him drops this week.

Talking to Hodge made me think again about the idea of heroes and heroines and role models.

I’m a grown adult.

I’m actually older than ATH.

But it’s fair to say that he’s a hero of mine - one of many. I think it’s good to have heroes and heroines. It’s inspiring.

I loved the way Hodge rowed - with fluidity, grace and rhythm.

I loved the way Hodge raced - with full focus, determination to win, but always with grace and good sportsmanship afterwards.

I loved the way Hodge talked. No Redgrave dourness on the Olympic podium. A big, happy smile and a shout out to his club:

How about then, then, Molesey?!?

Go and watch the 2008 Olympic Final where he, Pete Reed, Steve Williams and Tom James row through an insanely good Australian Four to win Gold in Beijing.

At any level, it’s hard to row through someone.

Once you’re up in a race, you relax. You can see your opposition. You’ve got them where you want them. All of the things that are really hard to nail in a knife-fight like rhythm and flow and ratio and timing and working together become easier.

If you’re down in a race, the opposite happens. You can’t see your opposition. You want to get back on terms. You start trying too hard - good rowing is a mix of brutal application and complete relaxation. When you’re down, you tighten up. You get out of sync, get out of rhythm. You get short. You start chasing the rate, chasing the boat rather than let it come to you.

It’s hard enough to row through someone in a local splash-and-dash.

To have the courage, the self-belief, the self-possession, the technique and the fitness to do it in an Olympic Final having spent most of the race behind …

With the world watching?

That’s rare air.

The Four’s win in London was even more impressive.

For one thing, to be an Olympian once, let alone an Olympic champion once, is exceptional.

We forget this in an age where greatness is measured in inflated figures and tallies. You can see that in football, where we’re asked to consider Cristiano Ronaldo one of the greatest players of all time because he’s scored the most goals.

Yeah, CR7’s numbers are impressive - certainly more so than his obvious narcissism.

But greatness isn’t about the numbers.

Greatness is about what you did when the moment came and how you did it.

It’s why Roger Federer will remain the greatest tennis player of all time, no matter how many more titles Djokovic or Nadal rack up.

Because like running the four-minute mile or climbing Everest, it’s the person who stretches the limits of human possibility who is remembered, not who came through the tape afterwards.

Roger showed what was possible, and he did it playing tennis the way God would if God played tennis.

The performance of the GB Men’s Heavyweight Coxless Four in the final win in 2012 was the greatest single piece of rowing I’ve ever seen in real time, as well as being one of the all-time great Olympic performances.

Why?

Well, the rowing itself was flawless.

Rowing is like music.

Both are mechanical processes which, if you work on them long enough and hard enough and smart enough, will move to the unconscious competence phase and will, on rare and amazing occasions, lead you to transcend their mechanics. You will achieve states of grace: the session where everyone is feeling the music; the outing where time stands still, everyone is in harmony and rhythm and ratio and the boat sings.

Literally.

You can hear it - a glorious living note running along the side of the shell.

Now, imagine having that experience in an Olympic Final with billions watching.

Pause the tape at any point in the race and the British Four were perfectly in sync. Catches, finishes, drive phase, hip hinge, hands away, rock over, hand heights, blade angles, draw height …

And that perfection was achieved under huge pressure.

The pressure was there because it was a Home Games - which brings pressure on home athletes, and that’s before you get to the England expects … jingoisitic bs that we specialise in here in Blighty.

The pressure was there because ATH had spent the previous Olympic cycle from Beijing in a pair with Pete Reed going toe-to-toe with Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, the greatest sweep pair in history, and coming up agonisingly short.

The pressure was there because the British Four was expected to win. Despite not being a professional sport, rowing occupies a strange place in the cultural narrative. The general population of the UK don’t give a damn about it but once every four years they tune in to see British crews win at the Olympics. Not to gainsay that success or wish it away, but British crews are expected to win. Redgrave won. Pinsent won. We always win, so go and win.

Could you live with these pressures?

With those expectations?

And the pressure was there because the Australians were back with Drew Ginn in the mix. For those who don’t know, Drew Ginn is a three-time Olympic Champion, four-time Olympian, five-time World Champion, Thomas Keller Medal recipient, and one of the most intellectually curious and engaging people you could ever hope to meet. You’d say he’s the Australian Steve Redgrave if it wasn’t for the last two qualities.

The British Four’s performance that day was like seeing Maxim Vengerov playing Ysaÿe.

Forget the bunting and the flags and the patriotism slipping into nationalism.

Forget that the Games were delivered seven billion over budget and that the promised legacy of nationwide fitness was, conspicuously, not delivered - because there was never a plan for or commitment to that.

Per capita, Britain’s children are now more obese than their American counterparts.

Well done us.

But forget that, and go and look at the performance.

It’s one of the best Olympic performances because it delivered perfection when perfection was needed.

People say you shouldn’t meet your heroes.

That’s nonsense.

I’ve met a lot of mine.

Musicians, athletes, writers, academics, activists, adventurers and everything in between and beyond.

They’ve all been incredible people.

There’s something about someone who knows who they are and who has gone to the well to see what they can achieve.

They don’t need to front and bluster and demand.

When you’ve proved it all to yourself, you don’t need to prove it to anyone else.

Personally, I think having heroes and heroines is good for us.

Not for moral reasons.

I loathe hearing pundits and mouthpieces talking about some so-and-so sportsman or woman or public figure needing to be a good role model - as if they’re responsible for showing the nation’s children how to be human beings, rather than the child’s parents and families and the prevailing culture and society. That was hypocritical nonsense in the Victorian age back when we were being told that W.G Grace and the gentleman amateurs played for ‘the love of the game’ even as they milked it for more money than any professional ever earned - and it’s hypocritical nonsense now.

I think we should have heroes and heroines because they can inspire us to reach for our own dreams and explore our own potential.

I realised when Lewin and I were chatting with ATH for the podcast - where he was brilliant: engaging, passionate and insightful; where he took us through the epic charge to the line in Beijing and the flawless row to Gold in London and the difficulties in going again in Rio without any of the banal platitudes that elite athletes sometimes resort to - that I’d been right to look up to him as a model when I was rowing.

Because as Hodge talked about how rowing had found him rather than him finding rowing; and how it had given him something he didn’t know he was missing; and as he talked about his journey; and the great people he’d met and worked with along the way; and about the pressure and the process and the feel of the boat and the opposition and his crew and the races themselves in such a way that the hairs on the backs of our necks were standing up; and as he talked about how we fail young people in the UK and how he wants to try and change that so they have the chance he had - I realised something.

Our heroes and heroines aren’t Gods, handed down from the universe predestined to achieve.

What makes them extraordinary is that they’re ordinary people - who go on to do extraordinary things.

That’s an important message in an age where immaculate lifestyles and immaculate people bombard us every day on every screen showing us perfect, perfect, perfect … making us feel lesser and unworthy and incomplete; making us feel that we’re not good enough; that we will never be good enough.

We were born good enough.

What happens next is what happens when we explore our potential.

ATH was an ordinary person who found rowing and went on to do extraordinary things as a result.

And when we realise that’s what’s special about people like ATH - that ordinary people can achieve the extraordinary …

… It empowers and inspires us …

Because it tells us:

We can do that.

©℗ A. I. Jackson

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