Remembering Penny Chuter (1942-2024)

The world of rowing is mourning the death of influential former rower, coach and FISA (now World Rowing) commission member Penny Chuter, at the age of 82.

Chuter became involved in rowing at an early age, having grown up living on the banks of the river Thames. She took up punting and skiffing – traditional fixed-seat rowing – aged 12 and was quickly winning national medals. Chuter’s coach then persuaded her to try sliding seat rowing, and in 1960 Chuter raced her first European Rowing Championship for Great Britain in the women’s single sculls.

In 1962, Chuter won silver in the single at the Women’s European Rowing Championships. It was Great Britain’s first-ever medal in this boat class internationally, and only the second-ever medal at these European championships for Great Britain.

Chuter retired from competitive rowing in 1964, but in 1973 was tempted away from a career as a PE teacher to become Great Britain’s third ‘National Coach’, and its first-ever paid female rowing coach.

She took the British women to the first women’s World Rowing Championships in 1974. Pauline Peel, who raced in the British women’s coxed quadruple sculls crew, said in an interview for Henley Women’s Regatta this year that Chuter was immensely hard-working and forward-looking in her approach.

“The way Penny ran the squad would stand up to how anyone runs a squad now, to be truthful. We always had a written training programme, and you had to submit your results for that written training programme. She always saw it as a great motivator that you could look back on a training period and say I’ve rowed X amount of miles and lifted X pounds in weights, all that kind of stuff,” Peel said.

Chuter led the British women’s squad for several years, before transitioning first to the junior men’s squad and then the senior men. By 1982 Chuter was director of coaching with oversight across all the British rowing teams, and she later became director of international rowing at the Amateur Rowing Association (now British Rowing).

During the early 1980s Chuter became involved with FISA, joining the Women’s Commission and playing an integral role in getting the women’s racing distance extended from 1000 to 2000 metres in 1985, and the creation of a unified World Rowing Championships instead of having separate events for men and women.

Her work advocating for gender parity in rowing led to Chuter becoming part of the FISA Competition Commission in 1985, at the request of then-FISA president Thomas Keller. Working closely with Thor Nilsen, Chuter helped set up the FISA development programme, running courses for coaches and athletes from developing nations. She was also involved in getting the World Rowing Cup series started.

Speaking earlier this year to World Rowing for International Women’s Day, Chuter recognised the impact of her work on equality in the sport, saying: “What doesn’t get focused enough in terms of how the progression of women’s rowing has gone has been the effect of the development programme and the effect of the World Cup. As soon as we started talking about the World Cup we started talking about everybody.”

Chuter remained on the Competition Commission until 2006. Later that year she was awarded FISA’s Distinguished Service to International Rowing award; at the presentation, Nilsen recognised Chuter’s role in many of the changes that had been made in the name of fairness in rowing.

“She gets right down to the bottom of the problems and many of the things I have got the glory for, she has done the work,” Nilsen told attendees at the awards dinner.

Having left coaching behind in the late 1990s, Chuter spent the latter part of her career working for Sport England before she retired at the age of 60. She moved to Cornwall in south-west England to enjoy the coastal waters, starting out sailing before she sold her yacht and took up gig rowing at Flushing and Mylor Pilot Gig Club. After many years of enjoying gig rowing, she was forced to switch to coaching when her back “gave up”.

The last stage in Chuter’s long rowing and coaching career saw her join Carrick Rowing Club, a newly formed coastal and sliding seat club in Falmouth. She coached and coxed, and made a last international appearance at the 2022 World Rowing Coastal Championships in Saundersfoot where she told World Rowing that she was loving the experience of coxing a coastal quad and using her sea-going knowledge to great effect.

Despite being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, Chuter was able to attend Carrick RC’s first coastal regatta in September.

She passed away on Saturday 16 November, leaving a huge legacy in the sport.

Thanks to RowingStory for biographical detail.