There was huge disappointment for Great Britain’s rowers on Wednesday, with no lack of effort but only one silver medal
Swerving off course, veering out of its lane at the last. Sport loves a metaphor. As Britain’s Olympic rowers reeled off a series of wholehearted but ultimately disappointing finishes at the Tokyo 2020 waterfront it was hard to avoid the sense the men’s coxless four had dished up their own slightly hammy, if unavoidably persuasive image in its final race.
By the end of Wednesday’s programme one thing did seem uncomfortably clear. The choice to allow Jürgen Gröbler to leave a year before these Games, a decision made by men who can only guess vaguely at Gröbler’s depth of fine-point expertise, looks as rash and as damaging now as it did at the time.
