I first met Penny just eight years ago, after she had invited me to her home in Cornwall to interview her as part of the research for this website. At the time, I was only aware of the barest outline of her achievements – she’d won a silver medal in the Single Scull at the 1961 Women’s European Rowing Championships, before coaching GB women’s and later men’s crews. I knew that there was some controversy about the latter, and as a student rower in 1990 remember a male rower declaring, ‘I wouldn’t have a woman coaching me.’ All I can say now to that is, how things have changed for the better (with the GB Rowing Team now being on top of the World under the guidance of its second female Performance Director, Louise Kingsley); how lucky he would have been to have been coached by her; and what a pioneer she was. You can read her full biography here.

But back to Penny’s living room in Cornwall, one winter day in 2016. Despite my being a complete stranger, she had cleared her diary for two whole days to share the story of her life’s work as an athlete and coach with me. After making me a cup of coffee, we sat down, and she began at the beginning, explaining how her first experience in rowing boats was in what are known as Thames skiffs. Proudly, she added, “I’m actually still a Vice President of Thames Valley Skiff Club.” I looked her in the eye, and said, “It’s OK, I know what you’re talking about. So am I.” And from that our bond was sealed.

I ‘got’ Penny, I really did. And I’m sad that so many people didn’t, certainly at the time when she was working as as the first female paid rowing coach in the UK. Penny was certainly obsessive, but in my opinion she was never trying to do anything other than what she felt was right, and for the benefit of the athletes and the sport of rowing. And my oh my, did she work hard, certainly to the detriment of her physical and mental health. At one point in the 1980s, the GB squad gave her the nickname ‘rigger mortis’ because she was always re-rigging their boats. But this, she remembers – and her memory was incredibly detailed and accurate – was because the riggers in use at the time were constantly slipping, requiring readjustment after every outing.

She was a pioneer in so very many ways. As a teenager with extraordinary self-reliance, she travelled to East Germany on her own, famously carrying her sculling blades through Checkpoint Charlie, to go and train with the East German women’s squad at their invitation. She soaked up the sports science that was being applied by their coaches then, unlike in the UK, and was an early adopter of weight training. Going back to her recognition of the significance of sports science to revitalising rowing in Britain – both domestic and particularly international – once she was a National Coach in the 1970s and 1980s, she would summarise key research papers into a ‘National Coaching Journal’, which would be posted out to coaches around the country. Like I said, obsessive but incredibly hard working, ahead of her time, and all for the good of rowing.

After she retired at 60, worn out, in due course she moved to Cornwall with the initial intention of doing a lot of sailing. Although she certainly did sail, it’s perhaps inevitable that she got into the local rowing scene. It’s also not surprising that she applied all of the critical thought and passion to it that she always had done. First at Flushing and Mylor Pilot Gig Club and more recently in the new rowing discipline at Carrick Rowing Club, she sought to help whole new generations of rowers develop in the sport for which she was so passionate.

In 2017, she coached a Masters eight I was coxing for one outing on the Tideway. We were a semi-scratch crew, yet she approached the occasion with utter professionalism, checking with me in advance what everyone’s names were and writing these down, so she could get each rower’s attention most effectively during the outing. That said, she’d known some of the crew for a very long time – Pauline Rayner, who had been in the GB Women’s Rowing Team with her for the European Championships in 1960, and Pauline Peel, whom she’d coached at the 1976 Olympic Games, the first to include women’s rowing. As the outing progressed, she somehow got inside our heads. Sure, there were certain technical things that she did with us, which I remember implementing when we raced – and won – the following weekend at Henley Masters Regatta, but it was the magic that she ignited in us that made us unbeatable that day. We had no idea how she did it, but it was wonderful.

I last saw Penny in August 2023 at the British Rowing Coastal Championships, where she greeted me warmly at the Reception Desk that I was manning, before remonstrating (nicely) with me about how she would like the starting line up to be published earlier so she could properly brief her crews. Every detail was still important. And she was right, of course. At that competition, she was there as a coach, but just a year earlier, she had competed as a cox, at the age of 80, at the World Rowing Coastal Championships for club crews, which were taking place in Wales. As she pointed out, the value she added in being able to coach her relatively inexperienced crews throughout the long-course races far outweighed the fact that she wasn’t at minimum weight, in what are also heavy boats.

She accepted her terminal cancer diagnosis with stoicism, and very much took an attitude of ‘happy memories’. She remembered with particular fondness taking part in a champions’ row over at the 125th Skiff Championships Regatta in Henley in 2017 with three-times Olympian and, like her, multi-time skiff champion Salih Hassan. In her final weeks I sent her occasional photos in the hope of bringing a smile to her face. Her final reply, just two weeks before she quietly slipped away, after I’d sent a picture taken in a skiff on the stretch of the Thames in Walton that that knew so well, ended, “Enjoy your coaching/coxing.” Still thinking of others to the end. And thank you, Penny, I really will.