Master of the Goldmine Jürgen Grobler
11:33 am, Saturday 13 August 2016, on the banks of the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, a man aged 70 years and two weeks had tears in his eyes.
Jürgen Grobler, normally relaxed and beaming, was speechless, a rush of emotion briefly overriding his genial imperturbability. His boys had just won gold again: the best late birthday present ever.
Seconds earlier, Britain's men's eight had cruised over the finish line, winning the biggest rowing prize at the Olympics, a day after their colleagues had bossed the coxless fours for the fifth games in a row. Grobler, forty years after winning his first Olympic gold as a coach, had just realised his ambition of the last four years and a lifetime of coaching – not only winning the blue-riband event, the speediest and most sensational race at the regatta, but personally coaching two big-boat crews to gold, which no one had yet managed in the post-Communist era. The tears didn't last long; within minutes viewers saw him on the BBC grinning with delight, hugging rower after rower with pride.
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