So close: Ed Coode and Greg Searle feel the disappointment after finishing fourth in the men's coxless pair final. Picture: Toby Melville/PA

Britain suffered a disappointing start to the finals when Greg Searle and Ed Coode failed to retain the coxless pairs title which Redgrave and Pinsent won four years ago in Atlanta.

Searle and Coode who had shown impressive form in the heats, finishing as the second fastest qualifiers from the semi finals, were fourth in six minutes 34.38 seconds only 0.12 seconds behind the Australians in third place. There was a photo finish for the bronze medal after the Australian pair of Matthew Long and James Tomkins had surged past the Britons in the last 250 metres.

France won the title in six minutes 32.97 seconds after Coode and Searle had set a blistering pace for the first 1200 metres. At the halfway mark they were almost two seconds ahead of their nearest challengers but gradually the rest of the field caught them up.

The defeat will be a profound disappointment for the pair particularly after Searle, a 1992 gold medal winner with his brother Jonny, only took the bronze in Atlanta. As he always says: “To my mind there are only two positions you can finish in - winner or loser. To me winning means the gold and all the other positions are losing.”

Greg Searle, together with his brother Jonny are already renowned in rowing for their tremendous race at the 1992 Olympics when they came through to defeat the Abbagnale brothers from Italy, twice Olympic champions, with a memorable charge for the line over the last few hundred metres.

Greg Searle then linked up in a four to take the bronze medal in Atlanta but the defeat in the 1996 Olympics was a huge disappointment. As he always says: “To my mind there are only two positions you can finish in - winner or loser. To me winning means the gold, all the other positions are losing.”

Searle then tried sculling, finishing fifth at the World Championships in 1998 before linking up with Ed Coode in the coxless pair for these games.

Coode, 25 from Cornwall, was in the Oxford crew for the 1998 boat race and was the stand-in for Tim Foster in the coxless four when Foster was injured. Coode won a gold medal with Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell at the World Championships last year only to be replaced by Foster after he had recovered from his back trouble.

Coode, who began his rowing career at Eton, responded graciously to losing his place in the coxless four and focused on winning the title here. Although they failed to make the final at the World Cup regatta in Lucerne they found their form here cruising through their heat and a semi final where they were only just caught on the line by France.

Searle, 28, was once named among Britain’s most eligible bachelors but is now married to Jenny, a public relations executive and former BBC press officer. They live in Wimbledon.

He has always had an intense attitude to his rowing. However he admits: “At some stage I imagine my life moving along. I’m not afraid of getting old and I am not rowing because I’m trying to be Peter Pan-ish about it.

“I want to have a family and a good life and enjoy myself but I can make a good living out of rowing so there is no point in me getting a proper job.”

JOHN GOODBODY
The Times