MATTHEW PINSENT once said that his diary stopped on the day of an Olympic final. There were no entries, there was no life beyond the winning and losing of Olympic gold. Andy Hodge, Pinsent’s successor as stroke of the GB coxless four, has inherited the same sense of Armageddon.

“As far as I’m concerned, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are coming down on August 16 [the day of the Olympic final] and destroying the world,” he says.

Hodge has spent four years deflecting the analogy with Pinsent. As he points out, while Pinsent was winning his fourth gold medal in Athens, he was finishing last in the British eight. Not much of a comparison there, or in lung capacities and ergometer scores. Yet, like Pinsent, it is to the 29-year-old with the flowing blond hair that coach Jurgen Grobler will turn if the final becomes a test of heart and mind as it did so memorably in Athens. “He [Hodge] can make the difference,” said Grobler recently.

Four years ago, Pinsent dug so deep into his soul, he cried for days after the British crew won gold by a hand’s width. Pinsent was not used to revealing so much of himself in public. In Athens, he was laid bare. “It was a question of who panicked the best,” said Barney Williams, the Canadian silver medallist, later. Pinsent panicked brilliantly and so did those sitting behind him.

Now it is Hodge’s turn to lead his crew - Peter Reed, Steve Williams and Tom James - into the unknown after a disastrous defeat in the world championships last season and an injury-hit summer. The coming month of training will decide whether the Camelot-sponsored British four can perpetuate the legacy of Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent, but the journey of discovery promises to be anything but enjoyable.

“At the end of our 44 days of training camp I want to be able to rip someone’s head off without blinking,” Hodge says. “I want to hate those 44 days. I don’t want to enjoy it; if you enjoy it you should be back at home. We’re not here to enjoy this sport. You don’t finish a race and bawl your eyes out because you’ve enjoyed it. Pinsent wasn’t there enjoying his race.

“You’ve got to be angry, to have fear and aggression and it’s got to feed in to that one boat acting beautifully together to produce the ultimate rhythm with the heart and desire to bring it across the line first.”

Hodge is talking about the inner mechanics of a great crew, the unspoken trust and commitment that can turn four individuals into an unbreakable force. Hodge admits to being Jekyll and Hyde, the cheery Corinthian one minute, a supercharged “dickhead” - his word not mine - the next. His friends tell him which is which. For Hodge, rowing, which he only discovered late in his teens, has brought out an unexplored side of his character.

“In one sense, I want to be the person who cruises across the line, who doesn’t have to fight for it because our preparation has been so effective that we can blow everyone else away. But I’m preparing to fight tooth and nail to the very end. The beauty of rowing is that you can have 100 guys 100% committed individually but if they don’t work together, it won’t work.”

He uses another image to describe the process that will make or break this crew. It’s the theory of the granny and the car. “A granny can lift a car off a baby,” he explains, “but she can only do it if she’s terrified or angry, if she’s using every breath and every muscle to lift that car. That’s what I have to feel on the startline.

“I’m quite a passionate person. That means I have a lot of love and a lot of hate and I’ve got to use everything at my disposal on August 16. I’m going to sit on that startline and love my family and friends, I will hate my opposition and love my crewmates to the core, be willing to die for them because for the next six minutes they are part of me.”

The bare facts are that the British crew will go into Beijing with a great past and a patchy present just as Pinsent’s crew did in Athens. Their World Cup performances this season ranged from the brilliant (Munich) to the workmanlike (Poznan), though there were excuses. Tom James, who replaced the luckless Alex Partridge, was injured for the first two regattas and Hodge dropped out of the World Cup event in Lucerne with a back injury. The psychological dominance of the first three years of the Olympic cycle has long since evaporated.

Technique will still be the focus for much of the crew’s preparations over the next month, but subtler changes will be demanded of the four. The crew four years ago - James Cracknell, Ed Coode and Steve Williams - had vast experience and could draw on deep psychological resources. They also had the eight-litre lung capacity of the mighty Pinsent, which preyed on the minds of rivals and nurtured the inner belief of a charismatic crew.

“Fighting this hard is new to us,” Hodge admits. “Everything we do differently now will be mental because you can only push the body so far. Finding that extra half per cent is mental. We’ve got to commit to all the sessions, do all the physiological and technical things we can do, but we’re talking about the Olympic Games and that’s got to bring out our natural ability to race.

“That final will be the race to end all races. There will be blood spilt. Whether it’s ours or theirs, who knows. And it’s terrifying, absolutely terrifying, if you think about how much you’ve committed to this, how many people’s hopes and dreams are invested in us, how much money has been committed to us.”

It is a tribute to Hodge that a coach of Grobler’s experience should nominate his leader so publicly. The success of the postPinsent four, which included a run of 27 races unbeaten, has been based on collective responsibility. There were no stars, but Grobler has recognised that time is tight for his crew and he needs his Pinsent to step forward.

“On my journey, Pinsent was some guy up there,” says Hodge, half embarrassed, half flattered by the demand. “I could see him but I didn’t know him and I didn’t copy him. I can’t even pretend to be him. To say I could make the difference, I don’t know. I try to be charismatic and lead my crews. If that’s what Matt did, it came out of me naturally.”

Hodge might not match Pinsent for medals, lungs or power, but, in Beijing, he might yet match him for heart and mind.