MATTHEW PINSENT will tomorrow announce his retirement from international rowing after a coruscating career that has brought him four successive Olympic gold medals and ten world titles. It is understood that Pinsent, 34, has decided not to try to continue for another four years until the Beijing Games, when he might have attempted to match the five Olympic gold medals of his friend and long-time partner, Sir Steve Redgrave.

Instead, Pinsent has decided that his triumphant run came to an end amid those emotional scenes in Athens last August, when he broke down in tears after stroking the Great Britain coxless four to victory over Canada by a margin of 0.08sec. He is expected to announce his retirement at Leander Club in Henley tomorrow. Today, James Cracknell, his other long-time partner, is staging his own media briefing. He will say that he will be taking a year out of international rowing. Next year he will be running in the Flora London Marathon.

The pair, who have been members of the same crew since 1997, knew that this month was the deadline for them to decide their future plans. Jürgen Grobler, the Britain head coach, needs to settle the squad for next year’s international programme, which will include a World Cup regatta in Britain for the first time. He is expecting everyone to be back in full training at the start of the new year.

Chris Evans-Pollard, Pinsent’s agent, declined to confirm Pinsent’s retirement. “We are not making any comment until Matthew’s press conference on Tuesday,” he said. Both Pinsent and Cracknell are expected to develop their careers in television. Cracknell will be working on the Boat Race when ITV screens the event for the first time on March 27 next year. Pinsent, one of the favourites for the Sportsman of the Year award in the annual poll of the Sports Journalists’ Association, has already written a critically acclaimed autobiography, A Lifetime in a Race. Both personable and articulate, he will be in great demand for company motivational talks.

He can also expect to play a leading role in sports politics, for he is being groomed to succeed Craig Reedie as a potential chairman of the British Olympic Association. Although he lost his position as one of four athletes’ representatives on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the Athens Games, Pinsent, educated at Eton and Oxford, could well be fast-tracked back on to that body. Jacques Rogge, the IOC President, is known to be an admirer of the British oarsman’s qualities and credentials.

For many years the junior partner to Redgrave, he never resented the spotlight being focused on the rower who had won two Olympic titles before Pinsent began competing at senior international level. However, between 1991 and 2003 Pinsent enjoyed a run of success that allowed him to share a plinth in the history of sport with only two other male athletes. They were Joe Louis, the great American heavyweight, and Aleksandr Karelin, the Russian Greco-Roman wrestling champion. They were also both undefeated for 12 years.

Pinsent was not beaten in the annual World Championships or Olympic Games in this period until he and Cracknell finished fourth in Milan in 2003. However, Grobler, who had such a beneficial influence on Pinsent’s career, decided to move the pair into the coxless four, which had finished second in the 2003 World Championships. This understandably upset the displaced members of the four and for the first six months of 2004, the new crew was disturbed by constant injuries and illness, Alex Partidge suffering a collapsed lung less than two months before the Games. He was replaced by Ed Coode, who has also retired.

Although the odds were against success in Athens, because the crew had lost so much training and rowed together relatively little, they were triumphant in a race that provided a fitting climax to the career of one of Britain’s greatest sportsmen.