大象传媒

Alan Campbell's nickname may be "Monkey" but that has more to do with his physique than a reference to the missing link he provides to what I reckon is the most exciting period in rowing's history.

It is not all about public schools and Oxbridge colleges, although they dominated the sport for the second half of the last century and their influence is still very strong.

Campbell will compete for Britain in the single scull, an event that can trace its popularity further back than football, standing alongside boxing in the 19th Century at the heart of popular sport.

Photo by

Its heroes back then, like Canadian and New Zealander , were as popular as heavyweights. Thousands watched along the Thames in 1912 as became the first Briton for 34 years to win the .

Professional scullers were not the full-time athletes we have now but they made their livings on the river, as ferrymen, boat-builders and coaches. Gentlemen amateurs tended to row in larger crew boats, in the colours of Radley and Eton, then Oxford and Cambridge.

Today, single sculling still attracts the world's hard men. The reigning Olympic champion is a Norwegian farmer who trains by sawing down trees.

Favourite for gold in Beijing is New Zealand's , who Campbell describes as "exceptionally tough and talented". After Drysdale pushed world record-holder into second place in the final at the 2006 World Championships, Hacker collapsed from exhaustion.

Despite , the great Steve Redgrave admits in his autobiography to not being mentally cut out for the single.

It takes a special breed, like Campbell, who took great delight in when we spoke recently.

Campbell's coach is Bill Barry, who tells a cracking tale about his great-uncle Ernie's encounter with a crocodile on the Zambezi River while racing Arnst for the first time in 1910. Apparently, both men collapsed through heat exhaustion at one point but Arnst was quicker to recover and managed to defend his crown.

As they bid to deal with the heat of Beijing, Great Britain's rowing squad have exclusive use of the 拢13m near Reading but Campbell can still regularly be seen on the River Thames. His club, , is in Chiswick, at the end of the Championship Course, where professional scullers first duked it out for the World Championship back in 1846.

Arguably, sculling in Britain went into decline when gentlemen amateurs claimed dominance over the old professionals in the inter-war period, although the theory is a little simplistic.

"The sculler is the best individual athlete from each country but in Britain we have more of a history of crew rowing," Barry told me pragmatically.

"Those with potential have tended to move to sweep and it's a bit self-fulfilling."

Nevertheless, Campbell is bidding to become the first Briton for 84 years to win Olympic gold in the single, and he has the weight of an almost-forgotten history behind him.