The new Lombard-sponsored website for the world-famous Leander four of Cracknell, Foster, Pinsent and Redgrave is far from your average homepage. Inspired by Cracknell, as he himself admits, and created by his agency 'Nuff Respect, the site is more of an Internet Experience, giving rowing devotees all over the world a feel of what the Famous Four are about.
Fasten your seatbelt, hike the modem speeds up to max, and put the Java on "boil" - you're in for a surfing ride. You can do this the high-tech or low-tech way, but it's much more fun with all the gadgets - download Flash if you don't already have it for the max version of the CX4 online, which is reviewed here.
Type www.coxless4.com into your best browser and the first thing to greet you is an introduction to the four, rotating mugshots like an audition for a police line-up. This formality over (which you may get a bit bored with the second time you log on), the main site appears, with plenty of areas to visit. There are brief biogs, telling you the usual details given in interviews, a history of how the four formed, news, diary dates and a media archive. Some of these are a little sketchy, but then this website doesn't aim to provide huge detail, so move on quickly to the fun pages.
Chief of these is probably the game, entailing sliding the four's shell sideways with a cursor to enable them to pick up points as they avoid obstacles on a river course. The graphics move smoothly, but as usual on most websites the creators have not tried to get to console-standard, so it's flat 2D - don't expect anything fancy visually. Instead, you'll find that it's a beguiling way to spend the odd half-hour improving your hand-eye coordination. 'Nuff Respect need to iron out few kinks here and there in the online scoring and results table, and they'll have something worth a Monday-morning, bored-in-the-office visit.
There are also two downloadable screensavers (PC only), a competition to win HRR finals day tickets (closes 5 pm today so get a move on), and a Q & A section where you can pose your own questions to the famous five. No, that's not a typo - although the selection battle between Ed Coode and Tim Foster is now over, coach Jurgen Grobler gets in on the act for the website, with his own biography. Just don't expect any answers which will help rival crews beat the four.....
The best area, despite the game, is the e-cards. Here you can pick your favourite mug-shot and email it to a friend with an appropriate comment. The pictures are better than average, testimony to the great access the agency has to these four sportsmedia targets, and if they're wise, the gallery will continue to expand , as the quality is excellent. (Oh, and you need to fix the error which allows a card to be sent with an empty recipient field...) Given the hero-worshipping status these boys have in the UK at least, and the number of young oarsmen they have personally inspired, the e-card page will remain popular and can be built on.
The downside to all this is that if you have an elderly browser and computer, surfing this site won't be as enjoyable. Many pages are not really accessible with apps older than Netscape 3 or IE 4, and the Javascript links rule out some navigation with lynx. In the "News" section, always the most difficult to keep current, there is no mention of the various press releases we've been getting at Henley, nor of Matthew and James's antics on their motorbike at the HRR tents this morning to launch the coxless4.com. But these are minor gripes - the site never pretends that it's catering for all markets, and in a world where film trailers are often first seen online, this experience holds its own as a good surf. It's decently quick to load, slickly put together, and easy to navigate.
Rowing's celebrity website list is growing rapidly. In a trend started by Xeno Mueller and Silken Laumann a couple of years ago, we now add to the list the Dutch heavyweight men's eight, the Australian Oarsome Foursome, and the New Zealand H4-. Get on with it the rest of the world, and shortly we will have the first world or Olympic final where every crew in it has its own virtual presence.
Rachel Quarrell, June 2000