It is with great sadness that the Club informs members of the death of Donald Legget, long-time coach of CUBC, who passed away last week at the age of 84.
Donald came up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in the autumn of 1961 as an Exhibitioner from Radley College to read Classics and Law. He won his Blue in his second year before rowing again in the fast and victorious 1964 Blue Boat, where he was famously known as the “HBE” — the Heaviest Bow Ever.
After Cambridge, Donald rowed for Leander Club and was elected captain before beginning his coaching career in 1966 with the Leander Cadet Squad. In 1968, CUBC President Patrick Delafield invited him to coach the Light Blues. Cambridge won that year’s Boat Race and, with Donald as a key member of the coaching team, went on to win the next five Blue Boat and reserve races.
Throughout the 1970s, Donald combined teaching Classics at his former preparatory school with coaching commitments at both CUBC and Leander. He coached Chris Baillieu and Mike Hart to an Olympic silver medal in the double sculls at the 1976 Olympic Games. Thereafter, he remained a part of every CUBC men’s squad coaching team, while also coaching at Radley College and St Paul’s School.
Donald became renowned throughout the sport for his exceptional “eye” — an almost instinctive ability to identify faults in a crew or oarsman’s technique and correct them with remarkable speed and precision. Generations of rowers benefited from his wisdom, honesty, humour and unwavering commitment to helping athletes reach their full potential.
Stephen Peel (B. 1985, 1986 and 1987), CUBC Club Chair, reflected:
‘I first met Donald as an eighteen-year old undergraduate CUBC trialist. He gave me the moniker, “Peel from King-sized Chesterfield”. Donald placed all of us on a scale from “f….ing useless” to “not that bad”. We constantly sought his affirmation of where on the spectrum we sat. One of my greatest achievements in rowing was eventually earning the accolade from Donald of “potentially quite useful”. He followed his athlete’s post rowing careers with pride and we remained closely in touch over the years until I came back to Masters rowing at Crabtree. Donald generously coached us. “Peel you row like something out of the 1980s”. He was brilliant, unique and had a huge heart.’
Pat Wild, the four-man of the victorious 2026 Men’s Blue Boat — the final crew Donald coached for CUBC — and himself a Pauline, shared:
‘Donald was an extraordinary coach to me at both St Paul’s and Cambridge. No matter his own condition, he was always determined to be at as many sessions as possible, simply because he loved being out on the water with us and helping us develop. He cared deeply about the crews he coached and, just as importantly, about our lives beyond rowing. More than anything, I think it was his genuine interest in my well-being and development as a person that will stay with me for the rest of my life.’
Chief Men’s Coach and long-time friend Rob Baker said:
‘Donald’s legacy at Cambridge is so hard to put in a few words, as a coach I have to talk about his incredible eye for the sport, he knew how boats moved and could unpick crew issues in an instant. Donald had a particularly great way with individuals and I often encouraged him to sit down with ’tricky cases’! These athletes often became the closest to Donald, the time he spent, the care and attention he had in helping these athletes to improve meant they became very close to him over the years.
What is hugely overlooked in Donald was his loyalty and friendship. His sometimes colourful language could often hide his care and love. Donald was a fierce friend to a few and I count myself as one of them. I first met Donald in the Henley of 2001 just before I started at the CUBC. We became quick friends. When I came back from Ireland to coach the then CUWBC, Donald became our biggest fan! A surprise to some. After our CUBC spare four won the Britannia Challenge Cup at Henley in 2003 he would often say I was “a terrible boatman but a good coach;” a comment I took with some pride at the time. I will miss our weekly chats, the regular messaging we would have, videos sent, comments made. I will miss his intellect, his wit and his friendship.’
Donald will be hugely missed by the Club. We extend our sincerest condolences to his family, including his brother Robert and sister Clare.
In accordance with his wishes, his funeral will be a private family occasion. The CUBC will organise a celebration of his life later this year and will share details with members in due course.
Patrick Delafield (B. 1966, 1967 and 1968), who first brought Donald into the CUBC coaching team in 1968, shares the following reflection:
‘“Here was a man so well known to so many people and so universally popular and admired that it’s probably superfluous to bother to cite his accomplishments in the world of rowing (it will need a book), but something must be promptly written if only to scratch the surface of a phenomenal history.
At the Blues’ Dinner of 2008 the CUBC presented Donald with a suitable, heartfelt gift of thanks for his having coached CUBC crews, without missing a single year, through the 40 years from 1968 to 2008. Then we did it again ten years later at the Oxo Tower to celebrate 50 years, on his birthday, June 16th, as it happens. And now the Grim Reaper has stolen a march on us and stopped us, by a few months, from celebrating 60 years of dedication to the CUBC.
Except that, in fairness, that devoted service to our Club started in 1963, rather than when he first coached our Club, when he rowed in the 7-seat. Cambridge came second that year, but corrected the matter the following year in 1964 with Donald slotted carefully into the bow-seat….”the HBE – Heaviest Bow Ever”. So his dedication passes the 6 decades with ease.
I don’t know how successfully he rowed at Radley but he did sufficiently well when he moved on to Leander for that celebrated Club to elect him captain. He instantly established a reputation for clear thinking and incisive verbiage embracing the mysteries of the rowing-stroke and it was this that led me to invite him to hasten to the Cam in the freezing winter of early 1968. You may wonder how well we got on……………..well, in the first outing with the then budding Blue Boat he hurled some gratuitous insults at us and, as far as I can remember, a quick and sharp exchange ensured that he never did it again. Not with the 1968ers., anyway. He just got on with constructive coaching as part of such a team of coaching luminaries as the CUBC had never seen. Do not forget that to be a legendary coach you need some pretty legendary chaps in the boat and the great Alf Twinn, the beloved and outspoken eminence grise running the CUBC from the Goldie Boathouse, saw to that. But of course he put that young Mr. Legget in his place as well didn’t he, and taught him all he knew (“’e was all right when I left ‘im, Sir”). And all the while through those early days Donald managed to cope with an alarming, experimental programme of cerebral electric shocks that were supposed to cure him of a mental illness that would nowadays have put him in hospital.
We won that Boat Race with a brilliant team of coaches, with Donald’s help, and the rest is history. And few of those who attended will ever forget that famous evening in Oxford, a month before the race, upon which the entire Cambridge Crew took dinner at Vincent’s Club, and thence proceeded to watch the University Boxing Match at the Town Hall, where Donald dominated the evening with bellowed defiance terrifying the Dark Blue claret-tappers and roaring the referee to silence. What an omen! Both the Light Blue crews won their races for the following 5 years, thus completing what we came to call the Double Double Hat-trick.
Donald’s principal gift? Exactly what I had been seeking in order to stem the Dark Blue tide namely the ability to talk what I call “stroke-analysis”, to identify an oarsman’s ability, whether nascent or developed, to assess a crew’s potential (almost at first sight – which is astonishingly difficult) and to bring about the right balance of selection, the fixing of the order, physical fitness and a truly remarkable extension of that ability to determine whether an individual is going to make the boat go faster or not. He would de-construct the stroke for you, element by element, and then carefully re-construct it to the optimum effect, all the while using choice language that would sometimes make a sailor blush. He knew within a very short time whether you were going to be able to make the grade in our sport or not, and he was never backward in coming forward to tell you exactly what his assessment was. Twice I had the benefit of his skill, first in the Boat Race and second in the double-scull for the Munich Olympics. I still think he took exquisite pleasure in making me scull flat out over 6 x 500 metre bursts immediately after lunch one Sunday in Henley. I had to forgive him, for our friendship had begun years before.
He remains the only person I know who can single-handedly destroy a brand new Hire Car without actually hitting anything. An entire Amsterdam street disappeared in a vast cloud of billowing blue smoke as the revs went off the counter and the engine summarily blew up. I never quite understood why or how he did that. Perhaps he was frustrated by our sculling, though we took the Amsterdam Regatta by storm. We had to leave the hire-car where it was and walk all the miles back to the Beethoven Straat.
One of his manifold secondary gifts was an astonishingly determined facility for finding variegated ways of putting his opinions across, and standing by them through thick and thin – as I believe sundry schoolmasters, schoolboys, schoolboys’ mothers and schoolboys’ fathers have found, occasionally to their surprise.
Every Blue and Goldie oarsman of the following 5 decades will have their own recollection of this remarkable coach and I will not presume to usurp them. Some will have been lucky enough to come to know him more personally away from the river and close to it. Along with Clare Fraser and Judy Delafield he was the only person, apart from certain Members themselves, to have attended every single Archetypals’ Party since its inception in 1973.
It has been an outstanding pleasure to know him, to be able to appreciate his wit, his talents, his ability to express himself with such openness, to laugh loud and long and to enjoy his company with glass in hand. Two gins, and only one tonic, thank you.
Donald’s achievements and influence will prove to be unique, and I hope that in his customary self-effacing way he will have allowed himself to be proud, because CUBC Members are all so proud of him. The CUBC owes him an enormous debt of gratitude and not a single member would deny him that.
Donald and his contribution to our sport will be the stuff of legend. He will be a living part of the rowing memories of anyone whom he coached, whether schoolboy, CUBC or International.
One word sums up his attitude to the CUBC and our sport: Dedication.
We will not forget him. Countless people in countless centres of rowing who came to know his wit, his smile and his unmistakeable gales of (sometimes hilariously raucous) laughter will mourn his passing. But the fun he gave us on top of all that will remain with the CUBC in perpetuity.’