ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a detailed exploration of coaching as a profession within British sport, and its intersection with gender, using high-performance rowing as a case study. It is underpinned by oral histories with three former high-performance rowing coaches and administrators, and one former international athlete and administrator – Penelope (Penny) Chuter OBE, Rosemary (Rosie) Mayglothling OBE, Sir David Tanner OBE CBE, and Guin Batten. It considers the differences between British and Eastern European coaching cultures observed by Chuter, as a British athlete and coach; the ways in the which the legacies of amateur sport in Britain influenced the delivery and experience of coaching from the 1960s onwards; the ways in which gender norms and, distinctly, limitations affect women’s engagement with coaching; and the particular demands of modern, high-performance coaching careers. It argues that these demands create a distinctly gendered inequality, but that to deal with this inequality is to overlook a more fundamental human problematic.
