History will repeat itself as Leander Club line up to face an international team in The Grand Challenge Cup this Sunday - here’s what happened in 1946
A crew of Leander Club athletes battling for The Grand Challenge Cup is a tale as old as Henley Royal Regatta. This year, however, marked a very special anniversary for Anthony (Tony) Purssell, who last lifted the Cup in 1946.
“Henley's changed so much since my time. Because you've got to remember; we had food rationing and clothes rationing and all sorts of things.”
When Tony and his crew lined up against a Swiss crew from Zurich in 1946, he was racing against athletes who hadn’t faced food rationing during the Second World War. Not yet a year over, the Leander Club rowers were still suffering the ill-effects of a country wounded by war.
"I was very naive. I suppose I was twenty, wasn’t I?”
“One of our crew had been a prisoner of war since Dunkirk, which was remarkable.” Tony’s crew was mainly university students. “Four of us were from Oxford University - there were four others of us who were heavier.”
Against all odds, Tony’s crew took the crown and title, winning by a nail-biting ¾ length.
When asked if Tony remembered crossing the line, he laughed. “No.” But he did remember receiving The Grand Challenge Cup from Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth). “We had to queue up for that, so I remembered it. But I was very naive. I suppose I was twenty, wasn’t I?”
Tony doesn’t have a favourite Henley Royal Regatta memory, per se. “They’re favourites when you win,” he says. “But it’s always something special.”
Tony went on to represent GB at the 1948 Olympics in the coxed four, but 80 years later it's Henley Royal Regatta that still has a hold on him. “People come here, you see your friends. And now, I’m not rowing. But the rowing makes all of this possible.”
In 2026, on Sunday, 5 July, The Grand Challenge Cup will be contested between the British and Italian national men’s eights. History repeats itself as Oxford University alumni Harry Geffen, representing Leander Club, will line up at the start of the iconic course, listening for the immortalised words ‘attention, go!’
Sunday will be Tony Purssell’s 100th birthday.
