Retired? Really?

I recently posted on X that I found it extraordinary that British Rowing could really not find a single person in the organisation prepared to put their name to proper thanks to Louise Kingsley as she departs. Various people have come back asking questions which are too long to answer on X, so I am writing here instead.

Let me first declare my interest, such as it is. I appointed Louise, who I believed was the stand-out candidate in interviews we held for the role in 2021 following results in Tokyo which were GB’s most disappointing for 30 years. I think results in Paris demonstrated that she was a sound appointment, but people can have their own views. Other than that, I have nothing to declare. I haven’t spoken to Louise, and what I have written below is based on what I know from my own personal involvement.

While I was Chair of BR, an allegation which seemed to me quite obviously inaccurate was made about her. I knew it to be inaccurate because it alleged something that I had myself been involved in. It had to do with an appointment that was made ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, when Louise was in charge of the Para squad. The appointment was made by the then CEO and the then PD, in consultation with me as Chair. I was, therefore, proverbially “in the room where it happened”, and so when I received an allegation suggesting something different - from someone who I already knew had an axe to grind - I had good reason to be sceptical about it. More than that, I had, after Tokyo, spoken to every single person involved in the Tokyo campaign – in the run-up to it and at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games themselves – and in 99 interviews which were all noted, not a single person raised the point that was now being alleged.

In the event, my scepticism was academic. The person who made it withdrew before there was any need for me to bat it back. End of story, I thought.

After I left British Rowing in November, the person who made the allegation came back to make it again. If that allegation had come to me, knowing what I know, I would have had the five-minute conversation to get the background that could have put it to bed. But the decision appears to have been made that it warranted Louise being removed from the programme while it was investigated fully – perhaps an unsurprising decision given that a view seems to have taken hold at the top that the sport is somehow full of safeguarding and culture problems. Louise was sent home, everyone was told she had personal issues to deal with, and that is where we have been for the last 8 months. If you’re concerned about culture and safeguarding, leaving someone at home without contact while an endlessly long investigation is drawn out seems a curious approach, but there you go.

The investigation began, and I was interviewed as part of it. I told the investigator what I have written above: that I could categorically say that Louise was not involved in the appointment; and that not one of 99 people I interviewed post-Games raised any question of impropriety or in any way connected Louise with the decision to appoint. I offered my notes from the time if anyone wanted to check them. I was therefore not surprised to learn that the allegation of misconduct was thrown out.

It is at this point that my own direct personal experience of the matter ends. So what follows from here comes from a third party inside BR (not, to be clear, from Louise). But my understanding is that Louise raised a grievance, which was upheld. I also understand that the original complaint that arose on the back of the allegation was filed by the Chair.

Make of that whatever you will. To be clear, this is information I have been given, not something I can independently verify. But what happened next we have from British Rowing themselves.

Having been absent for months while an investigation took place, their Performance Director was cleared to the extent that British Rowing decided to take no further action. She then immediately “retired”, two years before the Los Angeles Olympics.

UK Sport has long stressed that the critical relationship in delivering Olympic success is the triangle between Chair, CEO and Performance Director. Less than a year ago, Louise as PD and I as former Chair and now interim CEO sat with the Chair of six weeks’ standing in Shanghai, celebrating fantastic results at the World Championships. Since my departure, there has been a new CEO and a new leadership triangle. Something has caused that relationship to break down to the point where at least one of the three positions has become untenable. It is Louise - with 85 medals at World, Olympic and Paralympic level won under her leadership, comprising 46 golds, 24 silvers and 15 bronzes - who has departed; and she has gone with BR apparently unable to find anyone willing to put their name to thanking the most successful female Olympic Performance Director in the history of British sport. She was left to provide her own tribute in a mealy-mouthed statement from the organisation which, to me, screams settlement agreement: she goes, everyone keeps quiet, and the word “retirement” – in her mid-50s – is used to draw a line under the whole sorry business.

Why do I care, now that I am long-gone from British Rowing? Because when something like this happens, there is always some underlying feeling that there’s no smoke without fire. Indeed, I have had people get in touch on seeing the headlines, asking me what Louise did wrong. That is unbelievably unfair, and the record needs to be corrected. Louise was doing a terrific job. No, she wasn’t perfect: who is? But she was proving again and again that she could manage a difficult programme of high-class and commensurately head-strong athletes and coaches extremely well. I look forward to seeing which nation has the good sense to pick her up and give her a job heading into LA and beyond.

The idea that - having been kept away from the programme for eight months - Louise sat at home ruminating, and independently concluded two years out from LA that now was the moment to “retire” is, frankly, for the birds. Presenting all this as a straightforward “retirement” conveniently sidesteps the rather more important question of accountability for the decisions that brought one of British sport’s most successful Performance Directors to this point. British Rowing needs to own the decisions it makes, and own the way it makes them. They should be hanging their heads in shame.