Steve Redgrave

His great-grandparents Harry and Susannah Redgrave moved to Marlow from Bramfield, Suffolk, in 1887.

He was educated at Great Marlow School.

Redgrave's primary discipline was sweep rowing, in which he won Olympic Gold rowing both bowside and strokeside (port and starboard).

Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave (born 23 March 1962) is a British retired rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000.

He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds.

He is the most successful male rower in Olympic history, and the only man to have won gold medals at five Olympic Games in an endurance sport.

Redgrave is regarded as one of Britain's greatest-ever Olympians.

Redgrave won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000, plus a bronze medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

He won the Wingfield Sculls for single scullers five times between 1985 and 1989.

He married Ann Callaway (now Ann, Lady Redgrave) in 1988; also an elite rower, she represented Great Britain in the women's eight at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

From 1991, the crews in which he rowed became renowned for their consistent dominance, winning almost every time they raced.

He won the World Championship for Indoor rowing in 1991.

He competed at Henley Royal Regatta for more than two decades, winning: the Silver Goblets & Nickalls' Challenge Cup for coxless pairs seven times (twice with Andy Holmes, once with Simon Berrisford and four times with Matthew Pinsent); the Stewards' Challenge Cup for coxless fours five times; the Diamond Challenge Sculls twice; the Double Sculls Challenge Cup with Eric Sims then with Adam Clift; and the Queen Mother Challenge Cup for quadruple sculls.

For much of his career he suffered illness: in 1992 he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and in 1997 he was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 2.

She was Chief Medical Officer to the GB rowing team from 1992 to 2001 and since 2009 their first full-time Medical Officer.

He was the honorary president of British Rowing.

Redgrave has three children, Natalie, Sophie and Zak.

Immediately after winning the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal, he stated that if anyone found him close to a rowing boat again, they could shoot him.

However, he changed his mind shortly afterward, and resumed training after a four-month break.

The gold medal achieved by him and Matthew Pinsent in the coxless pair at the Atlanta 1996 games was particularly notable for being the only gold medal achieved by the entire British Olympic team across all sports during that particular Olympic games.

In 2000, he won his fifth consecutive Olympic Gold Medal and retired from the sport.

In August 2000, prior to his final Olympic Games, the BBC broadcast Gold Fever, a three-part BBC documentary which had followed the coxless four in the years leading up to the Olympics.

It included video diaries recording the highs and lows in the quest for gold.

At the medal ceremony after the 2000 Summer Olympics he was also presented with a gold Olympic pin by IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch in recognition of his achievement.

At the World Rowing Championships he won nine gold medals, two silvers, and a bronze.

In 2002, he was ranked number 36 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

In April 2006 Redgrave completed his third London Marathon, raising a record £1,800,000 for charity.

He starred in Top Ground Gear Force for Sport Relief in 2008, where the Top Gear Team (Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond) took on Ground Force with predictable results, and trashed his garden.

He launched his own Fairtrade Cotton Brand of clothing called FiveG, which was sold in Debenhams department stores.

He was involved in starting a rowing academy in India at Lavasa, the new Hill City being developed near Pune City.

In April 2008, Redgrave took part in the Olympic Torch relay for the games in Beijing, and he went on to be one of the final torch-bearers for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, carrying the torch into the stadium, where seven young athletes shared the task of lighting the cauldron at the opening ceremony.

He was named a Patron of the Jaguar Academy of Sport in 2010.

He received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year – Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

Redgrave was born in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, to Geoffrey Edward Redgrave, a submariner in the Second World War who became a builder, and Sheila Marion, daughter of Harold Stevenson, a local bus driver.

In 2012, he took up kayaking and attempted the Devizes-to-Westminster marathon kayak race, but had to withdraw halfway through due to tiredness.

He rowed on the Gloriana as part of the royal pageant for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

In August 2014, Redgrave was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.

As of 2016 he was the fourth-most decorated British Olympian, after cyclists Sir Chris Hoy, Sir Jason Kenny and Sir Bradley Wiggins.

He has carried the British flag at the opening of the Olympic Games on two occasions.

In May 2018, Redgrave assumed the High-Level Performance Director role for the Chinese Rowing Association to help China's rowing team's target of one gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Games and two golds at Paris 2024.