Bourne Again

© Benedict Tufnell

Having learnt to row in the Fenlands opposite Cambridge University Boat Club, Great Britain’s George Bourne came agonisingly close to realising his childhood dream of racing at the Olympic Games. Twice on the wrong side of selection, Bourne could only watch from the grandstands as his friends and former teammates won Olympic medals in Paris. Now studying for an MBA, Bourne is back and hungry for redemption, this time of the Light Blue variety.

Few know the glory of becoming an Olympian, fewer still know the pain of missing out. When George Bourne racks his boat for the last time, he’ll know both sides of the coin: or so he hopes. Last summer the British sculler came within seven seconds of qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. “Optimism and hope. Those are the two things that really get you at the finish line, when you know it’s not going to happen, and you’ve reached the end of the road for your Olympic dream,” says Bourne.

Less than six months after his crushing defeat, the former crosscountry runner, who learnt to row in Ely, accepted a place on the MBA program at the Judge Business School and joined Cambridge University Boat Club where he found a renewed sense of purpose on the water. Should the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games provide George his Hollywood ending, then it will be Cambridge for whom the credits roll.

The Boat Race aspirant is a changed man since last summer. “I don’t know when it happened, but at some stage I’ve stopped taking strokes for me and started taking them for the guys around me. Now I’m pulling for Cambridge and I’m pulling for the club’s history.”

It was on the East Sussex/Kent border at Bewl Bridge Rowing Club, when a 17-year-old George took his first fumbling strokes in a boat. Not long afterwards his parents moved to Cambridge and George joined the Isle of Ely and Rob Roy boat clubs, where he began training on the same stretch of water as the Light Blues. The young sculler was enthralled by The Boat Race triallists. “Not just because they had electricity in their boathouse, and we boated from a shed.”

“My first conversation with Rob [Baker, the Cambridge Men’s Head Coach] was in 2019. I cycled from home and came and met him here in this boathouse,” says George, sat in the Captain’s Room of CUBC’s Goldie Boathouse, which overlooks the River Cam and Midsummer Common beyond.

“Representing Cambridge in The Boat Race has been a long-term goal, something I’ve always wanted to do. I remember the first time I watched The Boat Race; I was about ten years old, and it was on TV on Easter Sunday.”

After taking up the sport George discovered his grandad had been an oarsman too. “He rowed for Jesus College, Cambridge and won The Head of the River Race in London, the reverse of The Boat Race course. So rowing for Cambridge is in the blood. I’m proud to be a part of it, and he’d be chuffed about that too, as are my parents.”

George made his senior international debut in 2021, two years after winning the Under 23 World Rowing Championships. He established himself in Great Britain’s men’s quadruple sculls and medalled on the world stage. The foursome made consecutive European and World Championship finals in the two seasons prior to Paris.

“Highs and lows,” says George of the rollercoaster of international rowing. As the Games neared he found himself on the wrong side of selection and was cut from the crew. “I’d qualified the quad for the Olympics the year before. You think you’re on one path and then you’re on a completely different one. It was a shock. It wasn’t the journey I thought I was going on; it wasn’t the one I’d planned for.”

“My old coach had this phrase: peeing on someone else’s fire doesn’t make yours burn brighter.”

George was offered a shot at qualifying the men’s single at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta, in Lucerne, Switzerland. The last chance event is known as the Regatta of Death and has the unofficial tagline: ‘Where Olympic dreams go to die’.

“I was presented with this opportunity to achieve the thing I’d dreamt of right from the very start. Who wouldn’t want to race their single at the Olympics? I thought, this could be the coolest opportunity ever,” says George. “There were some great moments; in the run-in I came fourth at the first World Cup and sixth at Europeans. It looked like it was coming down to three or four scullers.”

Winning his heat and quarter-final George blitzed the early rounds in Lucerne, and progressed to the allimportant final, 0.12 seconds behind the American semi-final winner. But his last race did not go to plan and George finished in fifth place, outside of the qualification spots. “It was brutal; absolute heartbreak.”

“I learnt that you can still be proud of the way you approach a race, even if you lose, and even if it’s a race you desperately want to win. The way you prepare yourself still counts for something,” says George. “It was my dream to race at the Olympic Games, but I missed out. One day I hope I can look back and think that was the year that made me, the year that kickstarted what I ended up doing and who I ended up becoming.”

Those who narrowly miss Olympic selection typically do everything in their power to avoid the summer spectacle. An Aussie from Oxford, who went on to win Tokyo gold but was overlooked in 2016, told me she retreated to rural Chile to work as a lemon picker on a farm without internet just to avoid the five-ringed circus. Not George.

“I ummed and ahhed but in the end I went out to watch it,” says George. “My old coach had this phrase: peeing on someone else’s fire doesn’t make yours burn brighter. And I thought let’s tweak that to: if my fire isn’t burning bright then stand next to someone else’s and you might just feel the warmth. That’s what the Paris Olympics was for me.”

“I watched my friends win their medals and I soaked it all in. I want to carry that forward. I’ve got this year at Cambridge to springboard me into the Los Angeles Olympiad. If the next Olympics goes the way I want it to, then it will feel infinitely sweeter.”

George is already off to a good start. While still getting to grips with the change of discipline from sculling (two oars) to sweep (one oar), he won British Rowing’s national team trials in February alongside his Cambridge teammate Douwe de Graaf. A strong start to the Olympiad and his Boat Race campaign.

“I bet those guys are lifelong friends, all still in touch. It’s a bond you create forever. It’s bigger even than the race.”

“I came into the year thinking this is George Bourne’s bounce back season. But there’s something about being at Cambridge – it’s special and it’s changed my focus. This year is no longer about banishing my demons, it’s so much bigger than that. People develop a bond to this club; a bond I couldn’t comprehend before I arrived. Now I get it.”

The Captain’s Room wears its history with pride. We are surrounded by Cambridge-blue wood panelling with the names of every oarsman from every iteration of the Cambridge men’s Blue Boat from 1829 onwards. The word ‘WON’ or ‘LOST’ above each one. The 27-yearold looks up and points to a spot on the wall.

“I bet those guys are lifelong friends, all still in touch. It’s a bond you create forever. It’s bigger even than the race – in a way that no other race that I’ve ever done, is. I’m desperate to win it. It’s a special breed of a race and my motivation reflects that; my motivation is as high as it has ever been. It’s massive on the day, but it’s massive for your whole life afterwards too. For me it’s a new journey, a new purpose, and new energy.”

So a pleasant change from the monomaniacal existence of a national team athlete?

“From a practical side it is completely different. Last week I had an indoor rowing test and less than an hour before it, I was listening to World Trade Centre negotiations. You have to switch between two completely different environments, one of which I’d never even considered before, and the other I’d normally have agonised over for weeks in advance. After the test I rushed back to the Business School for a lecture on financial modelling. It’s busy in the best way; new and exciting, stimulating and exhausting.”

Has Olympic gold lost its lustre? “Cambridge is changing that. I’m buying-in so strongly to the Cambridge project, and it’s showing me that there is more to rowing than the Olympics. There are different journeys and opportunities to prove yourself and to win with friends. You must enjoy each moment as it comes; and to enjoy rowing for what rowing is. If I get too hung up on going to the Olympics, or winning the Olympics, then it could all come crashing down again.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I hope to get there, that’s what I’m striving for and that’s what I hold as the ultimate motivation, but it’s important to enjoy the day-to-day and recognise the privilege we have to be doing this race or travelling the world for rowing and representing the country – I’ll make every effort to not lose sight of that. That’s my approach and hopefully that brings with it the medals and some of the glory. Fingers crossed.”