For the moment, intermittent rain had given way to sunshine at the Redgrave and Pinsent Rowing Lake, and the entire GB Rowing Team for this year's World Championships in Bled, Slovenia. were assembled at their HQ at Caversham, near Reading, for the benefit of the cameras.

The atmosphere was that of a school photograph, with the big lads at the back creating most of the noise. Alan Campbell, the single sculler from Coleraine who spends no small part of his training time heaving giant tyres around, was leaning over the flaxen-haired figure of Andy Triggs Hodge, one of the golden four from the Beijing Olympics, enquiring loudly and repeatedly: "Whose is this Labrador?"

Eddies of laughter swirled up from different parts of the group. There were roars of derision as one of the taller rowers was asked to depart the front rank and join the tall boys at the back. There were whistles as a lady photographer sprawled on the ground attempting a notably challenging shot, and again, as a banner promoting Reactivate Bucks, installed by a media member chancing their arm, was good humouredly but swiftly uninstalled by Caroline Searle, the GB Rowing press officer.


As the World Championships loom on the horizon, GB Rowing appear a happy crew - and a successful crew, as their recent performances at the World Cup in Lucerne (four golds, four silvers and two bronzes) and at the last adaptive rowing World Cup racing in Munich (two golds and two bronzes from four boats) clearly indicate.

There is serious work to be done in Slovenia, however. Not least the paramount task of qualifying crews for next year's London Olympics.

As in other sports such as modern pentathlon, the emphasis is on securing places, not people. If, for instance, the men's eight do well enough to earn a place at London 2012 it doesn't mean that the eight who have secured that qualification will personally be assured of involvement a year down the line. Oh no.


With promising young oarsman such as 19-year-old Constantine Louloudis and his 22-year-old partner in the pairs, George Nash, pushing hard into the senior ranks - they came fourth in this year's National Trials - the selection could yet be an altered one as London 2012 approaches. For the men's heavyweight rowers, Bled will offer an opportunity to excel - but also a challenge to show they can keep their performances up to the mark. The mark monitored by the man who has been the men's Chief Coach since 1991, since when he has personally coached five crews to gold at the last five Olympics.

Over the years, this native of Magdeburg has made some big calls when it comes to selection - and he has yet to have been proved wrong. Steve Redgrave and Matt Pinsent probably decided for themselves that they didn't want to continue as a pair after winning successive Olympic titles in Barcelona and Atlanta - where Redgrave suggested that anyone seeing him rowing competitively again would have full permission to shoot him. But it was Jürgen Gröbler who managed their switch to the four which caught the public imagination as no other rowing crew had in winning gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The boat in which that iconic - yes, I think that word really might be merited a sporting context - victory was obtained now stands on display in Henley's River and Rowing Museum. A sporting icon, in fact, although sadly the sugar lumps which Redgrave - by then diabetic - had taped to the inside of the shell in case of any unforeseen delays no longer remain.


Three years after that Sydney triumph, the coxless pair of Pinsent and James Cracknell, good enough to have won the world title in the two previous years, dropped off the podium standard to fourth place. Again, Gröbler was at the centre of a decision to shift the two Olympic gold medallists back into a four in time for the Athens Games of 2004. Result, with the able assistance of Steve Williams and Ed Coode, gold.

The situation at these World Championships is different to previous ones, in that, as Performance Director David Tanner asserted earlier this week at the GB press conference, this team has a greater breadth of quality - across men's and women's heavyweights, lightweights and adaptive crews - than any previous one.

In Gröbler's domain, there is certainly huge consistency. The four of Alex Gregory, Ric Egington, Matt Langridge and Beijing gold medallist Tom James were Lucerne gold medallists, the eight took bronze behind the German world champions and the Netherlands, and the pair of Triggs Hodge and Peter Reed were silver medallists behind the all-conquering New Zealanders Eric Murray and Hamish Bond.

Should those crews maintain their relative positions in Bled, where Alan Campbell, in the single sculls, and the quadruple scull - which also took silver in Lucerne - it would be a very big call to make any alterations going into Olympic year.

And yet if Triggs Hodge and Reed, who finished seven seconds adrift of the Kiwis in Switzerland, should suffer another heavy defeat, there may be a question of whether these two gold medallists of 2008 will continue to bash their heads against the black wall for another year.

Should Gröbler be contemplating the possibility of another move to parallel that of 2003 he knows that the only justification for such a switch would be gold rather than silver. But then rowers of the pair's quality could surely add an extra surge to any boat.

Gröbler was, as you might imagine, careful not to disclose any of his tactical considerations to the media throng this week. What he did say on the subject of the London 2012 Games, in characteristically gnomic style, was this: "Under nobody's seat is there a name."

In other words, it's all up for grabs. And performance is king.

There is only one road leading to the Redgrave and Pinsent Rowing Lake - it is called Gröbler Way. Entirely fitting.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.