Forget Oxford, it is Oxford Brookes that is GB Rowing’s new talent factory

In the Oxford Brookes University Boat Club there are pictures of victory everywhere. Pinned to the walls leading up the stairs, then spreading out across the main room, are dozens of photos of crews in the immediate aftermath of triumph at regattas in Henley and beyond. This is what boat clubs have traditionally always done: decorated their walls in the celebration of success.

But what is remarkable about the Oxford Brookes pictures is how recent they are. While the long established institutions along the Thames at Putney have pictures dating back to the early 20th Century attached to their panelled walls, at Brookes the history extends no more than a couple of decades. Yet from a standing start back in the mid-Nineties this has become the country’s foremost rowing club, a centre of excellence producing the nation’s best oarsmen. And increasingly oarswomen. This year, as a mark of their growing supremacy in the business of developing talent, every member of the GB men’s four and half the men’s eight in Paris for the Olympic Games are Brookes alumni.

“We’re immensely proud,” says Henry Bailhache-Webb, the head coach at the club. “The men’s eight have been world champions three years on the trot, so they are quite capable of winning gold. The four are equally brilliant. It will be amazing. But I must admit I will be a bit nervous standing alongside the lake when they start the competition. Seeing those lads you have worked with for so long in the ultimate competition: it will mean an awful lot.”

Brookes take rowing to another level

When you think of Oxford and rowing, it is generally to do with the Boat Race. The annual events, when Oxford University students row along the London Tideway against those from Cambridge, has been a staple of the British sporting calendar for nigh on 170 years. But the real story of rowing in the city is not at the University, but at Brookes, the neighbouring university that was upgraded from Oxford Polytechnic in 1993. There they have taken rowing to another level altogether.

While Oxford generally sends rowers into banking careers, Brookes develops future Olympians. Indeed, if you want a measure of how the two institutions compare it comes in pre-Boat Race contests which are held between the crews of Brookes and the two participating universities every year, as part of the preparation for the big day.

“Actually, we regard it as being part of our preparations for the season ahead, not merely helping them,” says Bailhache-Webb, pointedly.

Every year the Brookes club supplies teams to row against the A and B women’s and men’s crews of both Oxford and Cambridge. That’s eight races in all.

“Let’s just say, we haven’t lost many times,” says the coach, smiling. “I think we usually win seven or eight of them.”

In fact, this year, it was all eight.

“We’re not a bad team,” he adds. “Our first eight has beaten the Dutch Olympic eight in competition twice earlier this season.”

It is perhaps no coincidence that Bailhache-Webb’s time at Brookes has dovetailed almost exactly with the vertiginous rise of the club’s prominence. He arrived at the university as a student in 2004, rowing under Richard Spratley, the volunteer coach who was then juggling organising the club with running a building firm.

So successful was he, after he graduated he was picked up by GB Rowing, earmarked for Olympic participation. But, while training full time on Lottery backing, he suffered a debilitating back injury before he could be considered for such elevation. He was obliged to retire from the sport. By then, Spratley had been promised by Jurgen Grobler, then head of GB Rowing, funding to pay for a full-time coach. And the first one he employed was Bailhache-Webb.

‘You can hardly see the water for boats’

“We’ve come so far,” the coach says. “When I started we only had 40 students in the high-performance programme. Now we have 130, plus another 100 who come along for the fun of it on a Saturday. You should see it down here then: you can hardly see the water for boats.”

Despite being based in a city bisected by the Thames, Brookes rowers train a 40-minute drive down the road in Wallingford, along a stretch of the river that provides as much as 10 kilometres of uninterrupted water. It is an idyllic spot, their boat house flanked by a nature reserve. As Bailhache-Webb stands on the jetty from which his athletes launch their boats, he says that however splendid it looks, improvements to the facilities are urgently required.

“We can put out eight men’s eights and six women’s eights every week at regattas,” he says. “That’s a lot of people to squeeze in. So we have got to expand.”

Especially since word is out about what is going on at the university. More and more young people apply to become students at the place, lured not so much by the courses on offer as by the rowing. Not that it is an easy option. Once accepted into the squad, students train six days a week, for up to four hours a day. It is some commitment. But the rewards, not least a potential Olympic berth, are tangible.

“Actually, I think 99 per cent coming here don’t do so thinking it is a fast track into the Olympics, but to be the best they can be,” Bailhache-Webb says. “A lot of kids want to go to uni. If they are into rowing, they will consider us, because they know this is the place to get the best experience in the sport.”

Mind, the path to Olympic participation grows ever more well trodden. Since 2000, Brookes alumni have won six gold medals, and a hatful of silver and bronze. And while Oli Wilkes, Matt Aldridge, David Ambler and Freddie Davidson – the men’s four who will compete in Paris – never rowed together at the same time at the university, their former coach believes what they picked up there, under his enlightened tutelage, has created a fearsome mutual bond.

“A lot of our guys took their habits learnt here into the international team,” he says. “Maybe they took some fresh ideas with them too.”

Whatever happens next month, Bailhache-Webb will be there watching his charges row for their country, hoping he might soon be able to put some more pictures of triumph on the walls of his boat house. And no doubt such a snap would be an image of ultimate success the Brookes University recruitment department uses to decorate their prospectus attracting in new students from around the world. After all, it is some story they have to tell.

“We’ve got more rowers going to the Games than I ever imagined we would get,” he says. “It’s an upward circular energy thing. The more we put in, in terms of training methods and facilities, the more we get out. We have got ourselves in front, now we just have to stay in front. That’s the challenge. And the fun bit.”

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