LEANDER athletes received yet more plaudits after their gold medal success in Beijing at the recent Sports Journalists Association awards lunch held in London.
At the glittering ceremony, attended by all the top names in sport and the media, Olympic champion and Leander Club member Pete Reed and his crew mate, Molesey’s Tom James, received the President’s Award from TV personality and journalist Sir Michael Parkinson.
Reed and James, together with Leander captain Steve Williams and Andrew Triggs-Hodge, came from behind in a nail-biting finish in Beijing to snatch victory from the Australians and take a third successive gold medal for GB in the men’s fours.
Rebecca Romero, the Leander athlete who was part of the GB women’s quad scull which took the silver medal four years ago in Athens, went on to become world champion with the same crew a year later in Japan.
The talented athlete then shocked the rowing world by switching sports to cycling, and made history in Beijing by taking a gold medal in track cycling.
She received the sponsor’s UK Sport Award for her achievement in becoming the first British woman ever to win medals in two summer Olympic sports.
The GB cycling team in Beijing set the pace for the rest of Britain’s Olympic medallists. Pete Reed spoke of the awe, inspiration and confidence that watching Nicole Cooke’s gold-medal ride on the first weekend of the Games had given him and others in the Olympic team as they faced their final preparation for their own triumph.
He said: “Thank you very much, Nicole,” — a sentiment endorsed by everyone in the room as they looked back on Britain’s most successful Olympics for one hundred years.
Published on 08 December 2008
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