11 December 2024
By Tim Koch
Former GB Rowing Team athlete, ARA Director of International Rowing and FISA commission member, Penny Chuter OBE, died peacefully at home in Mylor Bridge, Cornwall, on 16 November at the age of 82. An appreciation of her life will appear soon on HTBS but her obituary on the British Rowing website summed up her lifetime achievements well:
Penny is widely recognised as having been a pioneer in rowing – as an athlete, a coach and a leader in the sport. The impact of her contribution has been enormous, and much of it created the foundations on which decades of subsequent GB Rowing Team success has been built.
On 6 December, BBC Radio 4’s weekly obituary programme, Last Word, included Penny’s life story. The recording can be accessed here (might not be available in all countries).
Further obituaries are on the websites of World Rowing and of the Falmouth Packet, her local paper at the time of her death. In 2017, Helena Smalman-Smith posted a biography of Penny on her website, Rowing Story.
Penny Chuter, 28 July 1942 – 16 November 2024.
Hear The Boat Sing 
And alongside her many rowing achievements let us not forget her huge contribution to racing punting. She was the Thames Punting Club ladies champion from 1957 to 1967 when she retired unbeaten. She was also the mixed doubles champion over the same period and ladies double champion from 1958 to 1967. She was an outstanding proponent of racing punting. In 2022 Penny commented in an email to me: “I do hope punting doesn’t continue to decline as, in my opinion, having done fixed seat and sliding seat rowing, canoeing, kayaking, and sailing, punting is one of the hardest to master really well due to the punter being blind to the exact depth and type of bottom literally from stroke to stroke”. Well put Penny – we shall miss you dearly.