Tokyo Olympics: Two medals, no gold - what has gone wrong with GB rowing?

Two medals, no gold, and 14th in the sport's medal table - the stats don't make pretty reading for Team GB's rowers.

They depart the Tokyo Olympics without the golden high that crews have experienced at Games gone by, with just a silver and bronze medal to show for a five-year cycle that was expected to herald so much more.

Their two medals - in men's quadruple sculls and the men's eight respectively - is the team's lowest haul since Atlanta 1996, and the first time GB has failed to win a gold medal since 1980.

"It's disappointing. You can't dress it up as anything else," says James Cracknell, a double Olympic champion from 2000 and 2004.

• GB men's eight take bronze, Vicky Thornley fourth

Granted, had GB not recorded six fourth-place finishes in Tokyo it would be a very different story. But for a sport which received more funding than any other over the past five years, questions are being asked.

So where does British Rowing go from here?

"I think they are under a lot of pressure," four-time Olympic champion Sir Matthew Pinsent said on the BBC.

"We've won a gold medal at every Games since 1984, so there are some very hard questions to be asked by the upper echelons within British Rowing.

"I know they're up for it. It won't be comfortable, it won't be easy for the coaches, for the administrators, or indeed for some of the athletes, but this is elite sport. People have got to front up and say 'this is where we went wrong, this is what we can learn'.

"The future is not looking back at what worked five years ago in Rio because the other teams have moved forward.

"Look at Ireland, look at New Zealand. Australia had a fantastic regatta. Look at the Dutch - all of those are working on budgets which are a fraction of ours. Not a small fraction, but certainly less. So they've got to ask the hard questions. They've got to be prepared to have those discussions."

British Rowing received almost £25m of funding for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic cycle but in December it was announced that had been reduced by about 10% to £22.2m for the Paris 2024 cycle.

"I think British Rowing has some issues to look at, in terms of their succession planning and making sure they are getting the right culture," Cracknell, who also won six world titles, told BBC Sport.

"They need to have an honest review about many things."

He added: "The reality is rowing is the best funded sport in the Olympics, and your future funding is based on your results.

"You've got this big sport, with loads of money and the perception of being privileged, which didn't perform and is now blaming each other. It's not a good situation."

'Rowing looking like a sport that whinges when it loses'

The Tokyo performance comes at a time when British Rowing is going through a huge period of transition following the 2020 departure of head coach Jurgen Grobler, who guided eight gold medal-winning British crews across seven Olympics.

It came as a huge shock - not least to his crews - when Grobler, the most successful Olympic rowing coach in history, stepped down in August 2020.

The German, 74, directly coached 20 British Olympic champions to 33 gold medals, as well as guiding 21 crews to medals at World Championships since 1993, 14 of which won gold.

But after winning bronze in the men's eight on Friday, British rower Josh Bugajski was scathing in his appraisal of his former coach.

"I will admit he is a good coach to some people," said Bugajski. "But there were people that he seemed to take a disliking to.

"I am going to be brave and say something the crew don't want me to say - I popped a bottle of champagne when Jurgen retired.

"I had three very dark years under him. I would be a coward not to say on behalf of the guys who are back home and didn't make it on to the team and got the darker side of Jurgen."

Grobler has been approached by BBC Sport for comment.

Cracknell, who was coached by Grobler to both his gold medals, said he would not have won those titles if Grobler was not his coach.

On Bujagski's comments, he told BBC Sport: "If Jurgen made his life a misery for three years, and for the fourth year hasn't been there, why choose to make any comment on the day of your Olympic final? That's strange.

"If he's had serious grievances and Josh was very unhappy and felt he couldn't raise them, that is a very serious issue and that's what British Rowing are going to have to look at.

"If it's someone who just wasn't respected or rated by Jurgen because Jurgen was deeming him not to be performing well enough, that's a different issue."

Bugajski's comments came days after team-mate Matt Rossiter said previous GB gold medallists would be "smug" that they were part of the "legacy that won".

Rossiter was part of the coxless four - Cracknell's former boat - that missed out on a medal on Wednesday, ending the boat's golden run at the last five Olympics.

"It doesn't bother me that he said that, because my legacy in the four is only 40%. That would mean I really didn't want them to win in 2008, 2012 or 2016," Cracknell said.

"The only person with a legacy throughout those five Games is Jurgen."

He added: "With some of the comments that have been made, we're now in danger of looking like a sport that whinges when it loses, and that's not the sport I recognise."

What does the future hold?

With just three years until the Paris 2024 Olympics, British Rowing performance director Brendan Purcell has admitted it must make "significant changes to really step up" after Tokyo.

Only eight Olympians from Rio 2016 also competed at the Tokyo Games and Purcell has spoken of how the rowing programme is "in transition", but he is confident there is the talent coming through to get back to medal-winning ways in Paris.

"We've got to look at the analysis of what the other countries are doing that we're not doing," he told BBC Sport.

"We've got a great base, a great model that's given us performances over the years, but everyone else is starting to move forward and we've got to move forward with them."

He added: "We're really confident we're on the track to lift up and deliver in Paris.

"Those fourths [places] were really competitive, and what we haven't delivered this time, we'll be ready for Paris."

The young talent in the British ranks also excites both Cracknell and Pinsent, though Cracknell emphasises the need to "create the environment" to get the best out of that talent.

"We have some young athletes and we've got some great coaches coming up," said Pinsent.

"There are green shoots of a new generation, and that's what it needs, to cast off the shackles of the history and the pressure that comes with it."

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