When I last took part in the British Indoor Rowing Championships in 2003 there was a similar argument going on in the halls of the National Indoor Arena. Both James Cracknell and I had heard that there was a much fancied entrant in the men’s open event by the name of Graham Benton. He had never rowed and turned to the rowing machines relatively late in life but his power and endurance was prodigious. His training times were equivalent to the rowing team of the day and there were a few worried glances that James and I threw in his direction during the warm-up. In the end Benton made the top ten but not the podium and I drove home relieved not to have been overhauled by the first non-rowing entry.

But the argument still raged about whether a non-rower could ever win. The diehards had it that there was too much technique involved, or that the rowing team, even then, trained too hard for any amateur to match, or that the pressure would be too much for anyone not blooded at international events.

But of course the rowing machine simply doesn’t care. It is immune to argument, history or histrionics; it simply works out who is pulling hardest and spits them out slightly less shattered than those who, according to its programme, are ever so slightly less able.

Yesterday Benton proved the argument conclusively. There never was any reason why a non-rower couldn’t win and from the very first stroke of the men’s open final he launched into the lead. In doing so he littered his electronic wake with the accumulated world and Olympic champions who were essentially fighting for the silver medal. It was not a pretty performance but of course it didn’t have to be — leave beauty and poetry for the Henley course or the Boat Race or the London Olympics where it makes a difference.

London may well be beyond Benton. The machine technique that he has taught himself does not translate well back to the aquatic. He stood out from the line of oarsmen firstly by his technique but then by the outstanding margin by which he was beating them. Indeed he has been enrolled into rowing’s programme to develop talent and may yet prove everyone wrong again.

For the sport, his win is a moment of significance; for too long it was accused of being restrictive and class ridden but after Sydney the Amateur Rowing Association rolled out a programme of taking machines into schools and giving a generation of children a competitive taste of rowing, albeit indoors. After an initial trial they are drafted into boats and clubs to take the first steps up the water rowing ladder. The first shoots from that programme, now six years old, are beginning to flower on world podiums in British vests so the indoor arm of the sport is not to be underestimated.

My last thought was thankfulness that Benton had not gone four seconds quicker and taken my British record, set in the immediate run-up to the Athens Olympics. But as the despairing Kasparov must have realised when faced with the scientific genius of the Big Blue computer programmers, I know it is only a matter of time.

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