Arnold Cooke

Disliking running and football, Arnold Cooke took up rowing while he was a student at King´s School, Chester. He rowed competitively from the age of 16 and two years later won the 1959 County of Chester Long Distance Championship on the River Dee, an event he would go on to win three times. Cooke was a member of the Royal Chester Rowing Club before joining the prestigious Leander Club.

After King´s, Cooke went to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he won all the leading sculling races including the prestigious Colquhoun Trophy. He became a rowing Blue in 1963 when one of his fellow crew members was Peter Webb, who Cooke teamed up with to form a successful double sculls partnership. In 1964 they won the silver medal at the European Championships in Amsterdam and then finished seventh at the Tokyo OIympics.

Cooke continued rowing well into his 70s and won national, European, and world senior trophies. In 2011, after recovering from cancer, he set a world 2,000 metres indoor record. Cooke graduated from Cambridge with a first-class degree in mechanical sciences and later worked as a mechanical engineer for the Ministry of Defence for more than 20 years, where he was involved with the design of warships.