5 August 2026

By Tim Koch

My recent obituary of Donald Legget went through many versions before I sent it to HTBS Towers. While Donald was undoubtedly an extremely talented and successful coach, I rather agonised over how explicit I should be regarding some of his less acceptable openly expressed views and expressions (one episode of which I personally witnessed).

Voltaire allegedly said that, To the living we owe respect, to the dead we owe the truth. However, my grandmother always held that, you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Eventually I was influenced slightly more by my Cornish granny’s philosophy rather than that of the French Enlightenment thinker and I wrote:

In the past, obituaries were highly respectful of their subjects albeit there were acknowledged code words that hinted at some sort of criticism or perceived fault. In the long past age of deference, it would have been said of Donald that, “He was old school”, “He was a character” and that “He did not suffer fools gladly”. 

Few would deny that Donald was a curmudgeon, a characteristic that can be amusing in some but not all contexts. However, the clubs that employed him seemed to tolerate or ignore some of his less acceptable public utterances, something not to their credit.

But, whoever wrote the anonymous obituary of Donald that appeared in the Times newspaper of 1 August had no such scruples (or perhaps no philosophical grandmother). Spoiler alert, it was titled Donald Legget obituary: rude rowing coach. The piece begins with some examples of Donald’s “extraordinary rough tongue”:

A large, heavy man, he laced his remarks with profanities and racial taunts — most unrepeatable. He gave his charges teasing nicknames: “the bloody Egyptian”, the “Turk”. He referred to women’s rowing as “assisted drifting”. Boys from posh public schools were “tuck box”, the rest “grammar grub”. The French were “the people who nearly lost us two bloody world wars”, the Canadians “colonials”. He told one young rower: “There’s a piece of shit on the end of your oar.” When the boy looked at his blade, he added: “No, the other end…” 

Rightly or wrongly, the obituary writer then appears to excuse this by holding that:

Some were offended, but not those who knew him. They realised he belonged to an age before political correctness. They understood that he never meant what he said unkindly, and that not being taunted was worse. They knew that behind the bluster was a man who cared deeply for his many protégés: a “Mr Chips” of rowing. They also knew that he was an extraordinarily gifted coach who dedicated his life to the sport he loved.

There were also Donald’s mental health issues which may have contributed to his outbursts, but which have also been used to excuse them:

All his life he suffered from depression. Rowing was how he coped. “You’ve got to fight your way out of bed in the morning and do something and have a purpose in life… The huge purpose I have is coaching rowing….” (In the early 1960s) he had a breakdown, underwent experimental electro-convulsive therapy and suffered from depression for the rest of his life. 

The full obituary is available online at the Times’ website. If you have not accessed the site before, you may be allowed to view it without restriction, otherwise you can take out a subscription or start a free trial.