When Torvill and Dean were at the top, everyone wanted to be ice-skaters The same was true of middle-distance running and hockey. They all had a blaze of publicity.Cracknell: “Don’t forget curling.”Pinsent (laughing): “And curling. No, I think the Rowing Association has done a lot of good things, but this is just the first attempt to channel all the interest. The question is: out of 100 kids who turn up on a Saturday morning, can we get two crews of eight? And of those, can we get two individuals who are really, really good? If we can, and if we can get that repeated all over the country, then we will produce more Olympic champions.”If not, if the will dwindles, or the funding, or both, then rowing might be propelled backwards (a not-inappropriate image, in one sense) to an era in which television coverage of the sport starts and ends with the University Boat Race.On which subject, the Boat Race takes place on Saturday and Cracknell and Pinsent will take part in the BBC’s coverage. As an Oxford Blue, Pinsent participated three times in the venerable event (“two golds and a silver, as I like to say”) but Cracknell did not. He went to Reading University, where as an oarsman he was considered a more outstanding prospect than either Pinsent or Redgrave at the same age, but failed to show the same single-mindedness, and so did not reach the Olympic squad until 1996. And to his regret now, he was not fully committed even then.I ask whether he was ever resentful of the attention given to the Boat Race? Let’s face it, it’s a bit of an anachronism considering that there are, more often than not, other student crews better than Oxford and Cambridge?Cracknell: “Not really Some TV coverage was better than nothing And I could have gone [to Oxbridge].

Not straight from school because my grades weren’t good enough, but as a postgraduate. I did think about it, but there wasn’t a course there I wanted to do.”In what is supposedly a much closer call than in recent years, which boat does he think will win?Cracknell: “I wouldn’t like to say I’ve rowed with them both, but three weeks apart. They’re definitely both better than last year.”Denied an inside tip for Saturday’s race, then, I turn instead to the pair’s own prospects, in the World Championships in September and, more distantly, in the next Olympic Games. Their achievement in Lucerne last year – winning two world titles on the same day, by a combined margin of 0.42sec – left even Redgrave awestruck. Are they confident of a successful defence in six months’ time?Cracknell: “Physically, we’re far ahead of everybody But we need to get out of bad habits We need to find more speed for less effort. The Australians won their national trials in a very quick time But we can’t do anything about that We have to look within. I think we need to be four or five seconds faster than last year.”Does Cracknell feel the ghost of Redgrave sitting behind him, I wonder? After all, if he and Pinsent get beaten in Athens than folk are sure to say that he is the weak link, that in the Olympics Pinsent can only do it with Redgrave.Cracknell: “Losing would be bad enough Nothing that anyone could say would make it any worse.

In the meantime, we can do a lot over the next two years to make sure we know, when we head to the Olympics, that we’ll win if we produce our best. And that we might even win if we don’t produce our best.”I ask Pinsent what their relationship is like, and how Cracknell compares with Redgrave.Pinsent: “The relationship can always improve, but nothing binds you together like winning And we are pretty good mates. We’ve been training partners for the last five years, so it’s not like we have to reinvent the wheel. A pair is a bit different from a four in the way you interact, but I look back to where Steve and I were when we started out We hardly knew each other.