There is a well-known photograph by Peter Spurrier, who has died aged 77, that shows a rowing eight passing a half-timbered boathouse on its way to win the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston, Massachusetts. The picture, taken in 2009, perfectly captures the rhythm and grace of a crew at work during a snowstorm, and shows why Pete was regarded as the master of rowing photography.
The sport is challenging to film because the whole caboodle moves from A to B over long distances – from multilane, 2,000-metre courses at international regattas to more than four miles in the case of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race and head-of-the-river time trials. Thus there is usually only one chance of shooting a masterpiece.
Pete’s’s sixth sense told him where to be – and when to be there – to capture the blood, sweat and glory of the sport the world over. He made magic during the dawn-to-dusk hours he spent beside lakes, rivers and seas in all weathers.
Picking the spot, whether in a set piece or a paparazzi moment, was as crucial as calculating exposure or shutter speed. He often stole a lead on agency photographers who would turn up on Olympic finals days, but was always willing to show the ropes to young newcomers. His portfolio adorned magazines and newspapers across the world, and he was seen by many as the dean of rowing photographers.
Peter was born in London, the eldest son of Donald Spurrier, an engineer, and Beryl (nee Thomas), an accounts manager at a shoe polish factory. He began taking snaps in his teens and learned to row at Staveley Road secondary modern school in Chiswick before progressing to Quintin Boat Club on the nearby Thames. He was then apprenticed to a firm of industrial instrument makers before working as an engineer in his family’s luxury tiling business. Flexible hours enabled him to take a degree in photography at Surrey College of Technology in Epsom, followed by postgraduate studies at the London College of Printing.
Rowing appeared through Pete’s lens by chance in 1981 while he was photographing wildlife in Thorpe water park in Surrey. The Great Britain squad was training on the lake, and their coach, Mike Spracklen, invited him aboard his launch to take a close look at his young protege, Steve Redgrave.
The rise of the teenager from Marlow, Buckinghamshire, to five-times Olympic champion was soon to provide Pete with a meal ticket, and his pictures of the Boat Race, head-of-the-river time trials, world cups, national and international championships adorned many rowing publications.
In 1987 he teemed up with the Australian agency Hebfotos at the world championships in Copenhagen, and in the same year contributed to the newly launched British magazine Regatta, of which I was editor. In the US he was an outstanding contributor to Rowing News and was working on a feature to celebrate the magazine’s first 30 years when he died.
He also became official photographer for British Rowing, and supplied pictures to World Rowing (formerly FISA), the web magazine RowingVoice, and Regatta’s successor, Rowing+Regatta. Despite those long-held associations, for the most part he was a freelance loner, running his own agency, Intersport Images.
In 1996 Pete’s camera caught a poignant moment in rowing history at the Atlanta Olympics when Redgrave and Matt Pinsent reduced their own world record by seven seconds to win gold, after the Australian crew of David Weightman and Robert Scott cut the Brits’ halfway lead of more than a boat’s length to a fraction of a second at the finish line.
The pair’s trademark during four previous years of unbeaten racing had been to spin their boat immediately after crossing the finish and paddle away strongly, signalling their superior strength to all challengers. But in Atlanta they were well and truly exhausted.
For a full five minutes they remained motionless, heads down, gasping for oxygen, and eventually Pete shuttered the moment when Pinsent extended an arm behind his back and Redgrave grasped the hand on the end of it in slow motion. The photographer had his image, and the handshake sealed what everyone thought at the time would be the pair’s last race together, although they kept on rowing to win Olympic gold again in a four-oar with James Cracknell and Tim Foster in Sydney in 2000.
In 2011 that image, along with more than 60 others, appeared in an exhibition of Pete’s photographs that we jointly curated at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley. The show drew on different aspects of his work, including morning mists on rivers and lakes, sunrises and sunsets, racing shells and coastal boats, and quirky rituals before races.
Among other photos on show were images of the Olympic champion sculler Mahé Drysdale going into orbit at the start of a race, the sculler Iztok Čop surrounded by swimmers bearing flags of Slovenia at the time when Yugoslavia fragmented into separate states, and the sudden surfacing of a frogman clearing weed from the rowing lake at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Pete also covered rugby and cricket when he could get away from the water, but his eye for rowing’s fractions of despair and delight on dancing water was what won him so much acclaim.
He was highly commended for his specialist portfolio in the Sports Journalists’ Association’s awards in 1997, 1999 and 2015, and was named journalist of the year for his international coverage by the British Association of Rowing Journalists in 2005.
He is survived by his partner, Karon Phillips, by three children, Blanche, Donna and Scott, from his 1972 marriage to Roberta Ball, which ended in divorce in 2010, and his brother Kevin.
• Peter Donald Spurrier, photographer, born 26 April 1945; died 18 April 2023
