How Britain’s greatest Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave didn’t do final interviews for British Rowing… and for the first time in 40 years he won’t be at the Paris Games as his BBC work dries up

Something will be a little different at the Olympics this summer. For the first time in 40 years, Sir Steve Redgrave will not be there.

The British rowing legend has been an ever-present at the Games from Los Angeles 1984 to Tokyo 2020. He won five famous gold medals in a row before working as a pundit for the BBC, an ambassador for Team GB and most recently a coach for China.

As things stand, Redgrave’s only visit to Paris this summer will be for a cruise down the Seine two weeks before the Olympics start. “The people who go on cruises tend to be my age and older, so at least they still remember what I did,” jokes the 62-year-old, who will make a special guest appearance on the ship with fellow Olympian Daley Thompson.

The Redgrave name will live on at Paris 2024 through his wife Ann, who is chief medical officer for GB Rowing, and Samantha Redgrave, who will line up in the women’s four. “She’s not a relative of mine, but all the international coaches think she’s my daughter,” says Redgrave. ‘I’m quite happy about that – but she thinks I’m more like a grandfather than a father!’

But while he is able to laugh at his namesake, Redgrave is still disappointed that his Olympic journey appears to be over, having hoped to ‘come full circle’ by working until 2028 in the city where it it all started for him, LA.

His BBC work has slowly dried up since Rio 2016, although his former crewmate Matthew Pinsent remains a mainstay in their coverage. ‘I wasn’t told I’ve been suspended but it’s kind of developed,’ Redgrave told Mail Sport from the headquarters of Henley Royal Regatta, which he is stepping down as chairman to follow this summer’s event.

‘Matt is the presenter and Katherine Grainger is responding to what I did. The three of us worked together at the World Championships the year after Rio, but then they said: ‘Male-female, covered in Olympic medals, why have three?’. Working for China at the last Games probably didn’t help matters.’

Redgrave became the high performance director of the Chinese rowing team in 2018, taking them from 16th in the medal table in Rio to sixth in Tokyo. He was meant to stay there until Paris, but left in December 2022 after finding it difficult to visit his family due to Covid restrictions.

Before his official departure, in November 2021, Redgrave applied for the vacant role of performance director at British Rowing. He didn’t even make it to the final round of interviews.

“I’m disappointed that I couldn’t give my skills to help the team,” he admits. ‘I felt I was in a position to be able to help with the experience of my career and the experience of being out in China, and taking them from nothing on the Olympic medal table to sixth place, a well ahead of the British team.

‘I felt I was the right person at the right time to do it. Clearly, the powers that be at British Rowing didn’t think that was the case. But when you say that, the team is in very good shape when they go to Paris.’

In fact, the team – under new performance director Louise Kingsley – has enjoyed an extraordinary revival in the last three years.

At Tokyo 2020, Great Britain failed to win an Olympic gold for the first time since 1980. However, at last year’s World Championships in Belgrade, they won four golds in Olympic events.

“The team took their eye off the ball in Tokyo,” says Redgrave. ‘There was a bit of complacency in the whole system and it kind of fell apart.

‘They have a better structure now. It will be between the Netherlands and the British to be the best ronation in Paris.’

In the list of Great Britain’s most successful Olympians, Redgrave is currently in fifth place. He was the first to win five gold medals, topped by Sir Chris Hoy when he claimed a sixth in London, before Sir Jason Kenny landed a seventh in Tokyo. In the debate about Team GB’s greatest, many would also mention the case of Sir Mo Farah, the only athlete to win four Olympic titles.

And amazingly, the quartet have more than just more medals in common. They also have the same birthday – March 23. ‘So it’s not about the training, the most important thing is what day you were born!’ laughs Redgrave.

I ask him where he would place himself among Britain’s greatest Olympic athletes. “I have always been in a team sport, so you have to put the individuals higher,” he says modestly. ‘Chris Hoy and I are pretty good mates. He always tells me I’m his #1 – and I say he’s my #1.

‘It’s nice to still be recognized for what you did. But once you move away from the sport, you realize that there are many more important things in life than just rowing a boat 2,000 m.’

However, it didn’t feel that way on September 23, 2000, when nearly seven million people at home stayed up – or stood up – in the early hours of Saturday morning to watch Redgrave row for Olympic immortality.

Four years earlier, after winning his fourth gold in Atlanta 1996, he had famously declared: ‘Anyone who sees me come near a boat again, ever, you’ve got my permission to shoot me.’

But there he was at Penrith Lake, despite being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1997 – ‘I thought my career was over’ – and breaking his arm three weeks before the Olympic trials in a freak gym accident. And his historic fifth gold was secured in the Sydney sun as he, Pinsent, James Cracknell and Tim Foster held off a late Italian charge to win the men’s coxless four final by just 0.38sec.

“You could sense that it had captured the imagination more than previous games had,” says Redgrave. Quite an understatement for a performance that ultimately led to his knighthood and BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Everyone remembers where they were in Redgrave’s magic moment. But fewer know how he almost came out of retirement again ahead of Athens 2004, calling head coach Jurgen Grobler after watching Pinsent and Cracknell finish fourth at the 2003 world championships.

“He thought I was calling to give my advice on why the couple weren’t doing so well,” Redgrave recalls. ‘He came to my house and I said: ‘I’m thinking about a comeback, I’m thinking about trying again for the team’. We chatted and he said, ‘Let me think about it and we’ll talk in a few more days’.

‘We were at a party in Leander this coming weekend. We never really talked about it, but he just looked across the room at me and shook his head.

‘I knew he said no – and I think he was probably right. I was too old with my diabetes and being out of the sport for three years.’

Two decades later, Redgrave now manages his diabetes via an insulin pump and also takes medication for low testosterone. Apart from that, however, he feels ‘in pretty good shape’.

So if a country were to make an SOS call for his coaching services with 100 days to go to the Games, would he make another Olympic comeback? ‘Of course,’ he replies. ‘When you’re only three months away, it’s a short commitment.

‘If someone said, ‘Will you help us through to LA?’, it would be a harder decision to make. But to, ‘Will you help us to Paris?’, the answer would be yes, I’m sure.’

Perhaps the cruise ship won’t be Redgrave’s only boat in Paris after all.

Sir Steve Redgrave joins Daley Thompson as special guests on Scenic’s ‘Sporting Legends’ river cruise along the Seine in July. Visit scenic.co.uk to book.