John Greene

So presumably Antonio was doing a great job.

Behind the scenes, however, many of the high-performance rowers were very unhappy.

They found Mauro Giovanni's behaviour corrosive in the extreme.

Several quit the sport, quit the programme.

Words like aggressive, unfair, biased, a bully.

These are terms you could deduce from their testimony.

Albeit, Mr. Mario Giovanni would presumably disagree.

He has said next to nothing in response to their complaints.

And he now works for the French Federation.

But if you want a flavor of his management style, here is audio.

And it's recorded by one of the rowers.

This is a meeting in 2019.

It's at a training camp in Italy.

And the team at large are trying to address the ongoing friction.

So again, 2019, Mario Giovanni started in 17.

Things are not going smoothly.

By the way, the Natalie he refers to in this clip is Natalie Long.

So that's a taster.

We can tease out the specifics of his behaviour later with John Green.

But for now, it's perhaps best to give a quote from Paul Gaffney.