ROBIN Brew, director of swimming at Kelly College, was a member of a mixed relay team which smashed the world 100,000m indoor rowing record at the David Lloyd Centre in Eastbourne last weekend. The team of six men and three women completed the distance in 4hours 48min 18 seconds knocking a massive 13 minutes off the previous best of 5hours 01min 38seconds.
The average pace set by the team over the distance was a blistering 1min 26.5sec per 500m.
Robin, who lives in Bere Alston, is better known for his swimming and triathlon skills as he broke the Olympic record for the 200m individual medley at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and went on to become British Triathlon Champion in 1994.
He said: ?Being involved with the world record attempt meant a great deal to me. The challenge came about in order to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis as one of the team member?s mother is severely affected by MS. Also it was his 40th birthday.
?The team consisted of a mixture of former international triathletes, marines and an up and coming rower who had all competed against each other at some stage during their international sporting careers.
?The logistics of assembling the team were challenging in itself as the day before the event one team member flew in from Houston, another from Australia and another from Switzerland.?
With the team assembled the tactics were simple, ?to keep the pace fast from the start?. The change of rowers took place every 15 strokes and with helpers looking more like Formula 1 pit crew members, the transitions between rowers were made smoothly. ?We knew we had our work cut out, as the previous record was very quick and only 18 months old. At the halfway mark it was clear that barring disasters the record was very much on the cards but the determination amongst the team was fierce and the idea was to set a record that would stand for a few years to come.?
Indoor rowing has become extremely competitive with more than 3,000 entries for the British 2000m Championships each year.