GREG SEARLE
Greg Searle was born in Ashford, Middlesex in 1972. He was educated at Hampton School and London Southbank University.
Greg won a dramatic Olympic gold medal in rowing at the age of twenty at the 1992 Barcelona Games with his brother Jonny and their cox Garry Herbert. In recognition of this achievement he became one of the youngest recipients of an MBE in the 1993 honours list. He and Jonny took the bronze at Atlanta in the coxless four (1996) and four years later, Greg Searle was pushed into fourth place in the coxless pairs final with Ed Coode at Sydney.
After Sydney and with his wife, Jenny, expecting their first child, Searle retired from international rowing. He is currently director of Lane4, a company established by former Olympic swimming champion Adrian Moorhouse offering lessons learned in sport to the business community.
On 31 August 2009, Greg Searle made an audacious, life-changing decision – to become the first person to win two Olympic gold medals twenty years apart. He wrote ‘be a legend” in his notebook and started to plan the greatest Olympic comeback ever.
After a punishing and lonely training programme, Searle took time trials for the British squad and was selected. In November 2010 he led the men’s eight to win an exciting silver medal at the world championships in New Zealand, missing gold by just two metres.
So far Greg Searle is on track to achieve the unthinkable: a second Olympic gold medal twenty years after his first, at the age of forty, in a great endurance race, in front of his home crowd, and with his wife and children watching in 2012. He wants to be their hero, your hero, your children’s hero.
Be a Legend is the story of Greg Searle’s 2012 Olympic comeback, was sold at auction to Pan Macmillan and will be published in 2012.
