A Scottish rowing coach talks about the moment that changed his life

WORDS RACHEL HALLIBURTON

When he’s coxing, Colin Simpson can tell you exactly how many rowers are out of synch simply by listening to them. “If I’m sitting in an eight, with my eyes closed,” he says, “I can turn round and say, ‘Five of you are out of synch’. And they’ll be amazed. A lot of them don’t like me coxing because I’m so specific and so pernickety about it. Often I notice things that other coaches don’t.”

Being hyper-observant is an important quality for any cox, but for Simpson, such perceptiveness is particularly remarkable. After a childhood and adolescence spent rowing and coxing on Glasgow’s River Clyde, his whole life was changed on the morning that he woke up partially blind. “There was no pain involved,” he declares matter- of-factly. “I woke up, and I couldn’t see anything on my right side. My mum and dad took me to hospital, where they told me I had a detached retina, which meant I was going to be blind in that eye.”

He was only 25. A diagnosis of diabetes some years earlier had meant that this had been a possibility, albeit an outside one, for a while. But he asserts, “I thought I was invincible. When the doctors told me diabetes could affect my eyesight, I alwaysthought that was a bit of a scare tactic. I wasn’t one for going out and drinking a lot. But I was missing the odd blood test here and there, just not being careful enough.” His instant, understandable, response following what the doctors had told him was denial. “I said, surely there’s something you can do. Surely this is not it.”