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Ed Coode, one of Britain's finest rowers, first picked up an oar at Eton because he was useless at ball games. He rowed for his school and scraped into the junior British team in his final year, but had little idea that he would be chosen for the coxless fours in Britain's Olympic rowing squad just half a decade later. Coode, son of a solicitor and born in Cornwall in 1975, packed in rowing after leaving school. He worked in marine biology in Jamaica for six months before going on to study the subject at Newcastle University. He only returned to the sport because the university rowing club had an attractive social calendar. Selection for the British Under–23 team and a bronze medal in the 1997 World Championships in France, led to his decision to take a postgraduate economics course at Oxford, where he won his blue rowing for the losing team in The Boat Race the following year.
When not competing abroad for four months of the year, Coode, 6ft 4in tall, trains seven days a week. He is on the water at 7.30am for a two hour session before breakfast, followed by a two hour weight training session before lunch and another two hour stint on rowing machines in the afternoon. Scuba diving into another world underwater is a rare departure from his daily regime.
Coode says: 'Many people think you go through hell during training just for the joy of winning, but it's not like that. You have to enjoy it, and I still look forward to pushing the boat off the landing stage at Henley-on-Thames on a clear November morning.
The basis of rowing is physical and scientific. You give it 100 per cent. What makes it special is when you fit into the team with that indefinable synergy, and our coach instils the confidence in us to find that extra half percent to turn us into winners.'
Royal Society of Portrait Painters People's Portraits collection at Girton College, University of Cambridge
Cambridge
Title
Ed Coode, Oarsman
Date
2000
Medium
tempera on canvas
Measurements
H 200 x W 120 cm
Accession number
467
Acquisition method
on loan from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Work type
Painting
Royal Society of Portrait Painters People's Portraits collection at Girton College, University of Cambridge
Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB3 0JG England
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Sir Douglas Andrew Kilgour Black (1913–2002) Royal College of Physicians, London -
Sir Douglas Ranger, Dean (1974–1983) UCL Art Museum -
Dr V. H. H. Green (1915–2005), Rector (1983–1987) Lincoln College, University of Oxford -
Director General Portrait – Michael Checkland BBC England -
Ed Coode, Oarsman Royal Society of Portrait Painters People's Portraits collection at Girton College, University of Cambridge -
Major General Sir George Burns (d.1997), KCVO, CB, DSO, OBE, MC, Lord Lieutenant (1961–1986) County Hall, Hertford -
Burke St John Trend (1914–1987), Later Lord Trend, Rector (1973–1983) Lincoln College, University of Oxford - 5 more