Justin Setterfield/Getty Images for British Olympic Association and Naomi Baker/Getty Images
- A Team GB rower launched a stinging attack on the team's former coach Jürgen Gröbler.
- Rower Josh Bugajski accused Gröbler of trying to "destroy" the souls of some athletes.
- Gröbler retired from British Rowing in August 2020, under a year before the Olympics.
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A Team GB Olympic rower has launched a scathing attack on his former coach and accused him of trying to "destroy" the souls of some rowers.
Speaking after earning bronze in the rowing men's eight at Tokyo, Josh Bugajski said he "cracked open a bottle of champagne" when former coach Jürgen Gröbler retired in 2020.
"I'm going to be brave and say something that the crew don't want me to say. I cracked open a bottle of champagne when Jürgen retired.
"I had three very dark years under him and I think I'd be a coward if I didn't say that on behalf of the guys who are stuck at home, because they got a darker side of Jürgen and they aren't in the team."
The German coach oversaw British rowing for three decades before retiring in August 2020. During that time Team GB's success in rowing was unprecedented, earning 12 Olympic gold medals between 2000 and 2016.
However, Gröbler was known to be an uncompromising disciplinarian. Speaking after his bronze in Tokyo Bugajski said the coach targeted rowers he did not like.
"There were some people he just seemed to take a disliking to. What he did to them was just destroy them. Destroy their soul, destroy everything they had. He had complete power.
Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images for British Rowing
"If you didn't get funding for a boat, your funding was never going to go up. I was pretty much broke for a year or so. My relationship suffered, my friendships suffered. Everything suffered.
While Bugajski made public his dislike of Gröbler, one of his teammates, Moe Sbihi, was quick to defend him and said the 74-year-old "bred winners."
"He is a notorious winner, he has bred winners. Jürgen knew how to elevate people."
Gröbler's winning mentality is perhaps evidenced in the fact that in the first Olympics without him in decades, Team GB suffered its worst performance in the regatta since 1976. The team went from topping the rowing medal table at London 2012 and Rio 2016 to finishing 14th at Tokyo 2020.
Britain's rowing team is funded by £24.6 million ($34 million) of lottery money and this year's poor performance brings that budget into question, double GB gold medalist James Cracknell said.
"We got three gold, two silver in Rio. We come away from Tokyo, £24 million of investment in British rowing, with one silver and one bronze.
"At a time when the national budget is under pressure from so many different areas, is that a good return on investment?" - he told the BBC.
British rowing is engaged in something of a civil war right now, with current athletes attacking former athletes and in-fighting galore.
After a calamitous race earlier in the week, Team GB's Matthew Rossiter suggested that some former GB rowers would be "really smug" to see the team fail, the latest bit of antagonism between the current team and former winners.
"It's just disappointing that those people will probably be really smug now that they are part of the legacy that won," Rossiter said.
Rossiter did not name any names, but it's likely he was referring to Cracknell, who has been highly critical of the current team.