The Club was sad to learn of the death of Chris Dodd on 25 January 2026, at the age of 84. Over the last 50 years, he was one of rowing’s most respected journalists and authors. Chris joined London Rowing Club in 1981 and remained a member for almost all the rest of his life.
Christopher John Dodd was born in 1942 in Bristol and was educated at nearby Clifton College. Clifton rowed out of Bristol Ariel’s boathouse and after beginning as a schoolboy cox, he progressed to the stroke seat of Clifton’s second eight. After Clifton, he went up to Nottingham University. He initially rowed there but soon preferred to spend his leisure hours as editor of the student newspaper, where his journalistic career started.
In 1965, Chris joined the Guardian newspaper as a sub-editor, and was mainly based in their London office. However, it was not until 1970 that he began writing about rowing, when he interviewed the Czech “Bob” Janousek, the newly-arrived British national rowing coach. In those days, rowing received much greater press coverage than it does nowadays. Chris remained with the Guardian as its rowing correspondent until 2004 when he moved to the Independent where he worked fora further 6 years. As a rowing correspondent he covered some 40 Boat Races (he once joked that the main reason he joined LRC was because it was the only Embankment club that allowed journalists to use its facilities at Boat Race time!).
Apart from his ‘day job’ in journalism, Chris was involved in founding three magazines: World Rowing, Rowing Voice and Regatta (later Rowing & Regatta). The last of these began in 1987 as a magazine for members of the Amateur Rowing Association (now British Rowing). He was its editor from its first issue until 2002. Being wedded to printed journalism, he was dismayed when Rowing & Regatta went from paper to online in 2020. Despite this preference, in 2016 Chris adopted the website Hear the Boat Sing as the main platform for his writing.
In 1986 Chris was a founding member of the British Association of Rowing Journalists and was Chairman of Media for the 1986 and 1994 World Championships. He was a member of FISA’s media commission from 1990 to 2002.
Arguably, his most notable achievement was his part in founding the River and Rowing Museum in Henley, which opened in 1998. After helping to get the project off the ground, Chris was one of the main people responsible for creating the rowing collection and library and curating special exhibitions and archives. Between 1998 and 2025 the Museum was visited by over 2 million people and amassed a collection of 35,000 objects. It was a sadness to Chris when the Museum was forced to close for economic reasons.
In 2022 Chris was awarded British Rowing’s Medal of Honour for his Outstanding Service to Rowing.
Last but not least, Chris Dodd was a prolific author and it is in that context that he may be best remembered at London Rowing Club. In anticipation of its 150th anniversary in 2006, the Club wished to have its history written. The view was that LRC should commission a ‘proper’ traditional history and Chris was selected for the project. A group including Julian Ebsworth and Tony Owen assisted Chris in providing access to all the Club’s annual reports and newsletters since 1856, as well as manuscripts and photographs recording the Club’s progress over all those years.
As Julian Ebsworth has observed, Chris’s “gifted prose made for gripping and easy reading; his history was very much more than a mere chronological account of events and races raced.” The book entitled “Water Boiling Aft” was duly published in time for the 2006 anniversary and Chris handed a special leatherbound copy to HRH Prince Philip at the clubhouse anniversary reception in May that year. Chris himself described the book as “a story of a vision realised by engaging and dynamic people.” The history was very well received in rowing and publishing circles and copies are still being sold today, ensuring a continuing income for the Club.
In 2006 Chris was instrumental in organising a special display in the Prize Tent at Henley Royal Regatta to mark the Club’s 150th anniversary. In the same year he curated a display about the Club in the River and Rowing Museum.
Finally, in spite of declining health, Chris generously contributed an introductory chapter to the 2023 history of our clubhouse, “On Finches Field”. This drew on the ‘Call to Arms’ chapter he had written in the history, with new information about the premises, The Feathers pub in Wandsworth, which the Argonaut Club used as its base prior to the founding of LRC in 1856.
The Club offers its condolences to Chris’s family and to his many friends in the rowing community.
