Rowing-Redgrave leads tributes to rowing great Topolski

By Mike Collett LONDON, Feb 23 (Reuters) - The world of rowing was in mourning on Monday following the death at the weekend of Dan Topolski, the coach who led Oxford University to 10 straight wins in the Boat Race against Cambridge between 1976 and 1985. Topolski, 69, died after a long illness on Saturday. Topolski was at the centre of one of the greatest controversies in rowing's history in 1987 which unusually put the sport on the front pages. Five Americans in the Oxford crew, led by Chris Clark, quit because of Topolski's coaching methods, but he replaced them with relatively inferior rowers from the reserve crew and in one of sport's great upsets, Oxford beat Cambridge six weeks later by four lengths in the Putney-Mortlake classic. His account of the mutiny was recounted in an award-winning book 'True Blue' and was later made into a Hollywood movie. Multi-Olympic champion Steven Redgrave led the tributes to Topolski, saying: "Rowing will miss him dearly and so will I. "Dan was a good friend and a rowing man through and through, a great rower and sculler, Oxford blue, world champion, Henley steward and a loyal club man before turning his hand to coaching." "He turned Oxford's bad run into dominance in the 1980s through fantastic organisation and then he joined an incredible commentary team seeing Great Britain become dominant in the world." As well as his coaching career, Topolski was a motivational speaker, author and broadcaster who commentated on the Boat Race for many years for the BBC and wrote for The Observer newspaper for 20 years. (Editing by Amlan Chakraborty)