Richard Woods gets as much enjoyment out of rowing today as he did when he was winning national titles almost 10 years ago.

These days the 50-year-old is putting plenty back into the sport he loves by coaching the senior women’s team at Gloucester Rowing Club and is enjoying every minute of it.

Woods first got involved in rowing in the mid–1980s when he was a pupil at Monmouth School and it has been part of his life ever since.

It helped that he was pretty good at it – national titles in 2008 in the coxless fours at the Metropolitan Regatta at Dorney Lake and at Marlow a few weeks later being obvious highlights.

“Yes, I won a few things nationally,” he said modestly. “It’s been great for me. It’s a very physically demanding sport. It’s also technically very difficult, it takes a long time to improve.

“It’s a team sport and you have to work quite closely with your team if you are to have success. That’s something I enjoy. It’s also a very sociable sport and doing the coaching keeps me involved.”

Problems with his back meant that Woods, who lives in Cirencester, retired from rowing seven years ago. “It’s just wear and tear,” he said.

Fortunately, he was not lost to the sport and after a spell coaching the men’s senior team he now guides the senior women at Gloucester Rowing Club, a club he joined at the start of the millennium when he moved into the area.

“Looking after the senior women is something that just sort of happened,” he said. “I’d been coaching the men but then a couple of them left to go to university and the squad broke up.

“The women were much stronger in terms of numbers. In an amateur club like ours you have to rely on other people and you do need them to be able to commit. At the moment, we’ve got quite a few women coming through.”

Woods reckons that the club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the country, has more than 100 members through its junior, men’s, women’s and veterans’ sections.

Woods is keen to stress that it is by no means a one–person operation looking after the women’s rowing section.

“Ladies’ captain Gerry Jones has been organising and looking after the ladies squad for a few years,” he said, “and has won a national title in ladies’ veteran double sculling.”

The club’s headquarters on the Gloucester/Sharpness canal are at The Boat House, off Bristol Road, and Woods will be there at least a couple of times every week.

“We are very lucky at Gloucester having over 10km of unobstructed water with a good towpath alongside,” said Woods.

“I enjoy the coaching. It’s nice seeing crews getting better. It also keeps me fit because while the women are rowing I’m cycling up and down the towpath to keep up with them!”