Daniel Topolski

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Daniel "Dan" Topolski (born June 4, 1945 in London ; † February 21, 2015 there ) was a British rower, trainer, sports reporter and travel writer.

Life

Daniel Topolski was the son of the Polish artist Feliks Topolski , who immigrated in 1935, and the actress Marian Everall. He attended the French School in London ( Lycée Français de Londres ) and the Westminster School and studied geography at New College , Oxford .

Topolski rowed and was already sitting in the school eight at Westminster School. For the Boat Race he sat in the rowing eight of Oxford University in 1967 and 1968 , the team won in 1967 and lost in 1968.

Topolski was nominated five times at rowing world championships between 1969 and 1978. At the World Rowing Championships in 1975 in Nottingham he won the silver medal in the lightweight four-man without a helmsman and the gold medal in the lightweight eighth at the 1977 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam . He competed 74 times in the Henley Royal Regatta and won four times.

Between 1972 and 1987 he was the unpaid coach of Oxford's boat race crew, and his team won twelve times, ten of them in a row. He appointed a helmswoman in 1981 , and he won with a reserve team in what was for him the last race without his American rowing breed, who refused to obey his training instructions. After his time, the coaching profession was professionalized. Topolski did not return to the Oxford team until 1995 as a consultant.

Topolski coached the British women's eight from 1978 to 1980 and coached the British rowing teams at the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games. As a reporter for the BBC , he reported regularly from the Boat Race and was a commentator at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and 2004 in Athens and 2008 in Beijing . He is the author of two books on rowing: The Oxford Revival (1985) and True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny (1989), for which he and co-author Patrick Robinson received William Hill Sports Book of the Year . The book was filmed in 1996 with Dominic West .

As a non-rowing journalist, he wrote newspaper articles for the Observer for twenty years , produced the television series Topolski's Travels for the BBC and wrote two travel books: Muzungu: One Man's Africa (1976) about his travels through Africa in 1972 and Travels with My Father: A South American Journey (1983) about a trip through South America during which he was incarcerated in Paraguay . He had to break off his trip to the Hindu Kush in 1975 when he was called back in preparation for the Olympic Games in Montreal .

New College made him an Honorary Fellow in 2013 .

Topolski was married to actress Susan Gilmore; they had three children.

successes

Fonts (selection)

  • Francis Chichester's guide to good living in London . F. Chichester, London 1975.
  • Muzungu - One Man's Africa . Arlington Books, London 1976.
  • Travels with My Father: A South American Journey . Elm Tree Books, London 1983.
  • Boat Race - The Oxford Revival . Collins, London 1985.
  • with Patrick Robinson : True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny . Doubleday, London 1989.
  • Henley - the regatta . Photographs by Roger George Clark. Murray, London 1989.

literature

  • Gordon Cramb, Simon Greaves: Dandy who delivered a decade of Boat Race wins , obituary in: Financial Times , March 14, 2015, p. 5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g Daniel Topolski, rowing coach , obituary, in: The Daily Telegraph , February 22, 2015
  2. a b c Christopher Dodd: Daniel Topolski obituary , obituary, in: The Guardian , February 22, 2015