The man who revolutionised Australian rowing and created a culture that saw the men's eight win the 1986 world championship and the birth of the Awesome Foursome says there's a simple recipe to the sport's ongoing success at the top level. 
"Competition is the key," Reinhold Batschi told The Aust-ralian. "Why are you doing all this preparation? Why would you be up at six o'clock in the morning every day if you're not teaching them how to race? You need to expose them to competition so they know how to handle themselves when they face up in the big smoke." It is a mantra that saw him reinvent the national rowing program when he was brought over in 1979 from Romania - via defection through West Germany - by then Rowing Australia president, now AOC president and IOC vice-president John Coates.
He was head coach of every Australian Olympic rowing section from 1984 to 2000, bringing home 16 Olympic medals - four gold, five silver and seven bronze.
Such was Batschi's contribution, the former Rowing Australia national director of coaching and Olympic rowing coach will today have the National Training Centre in Canberra renamed in his honour.
Coates told The Australian that not only was he the national team's first professional coach and "a wonderful man", but what he did with the rowing program was "groundbreaking".
"We met once a week," Coates recalled.
"We'd go over to Reinhold's house and his wife would feed us with Romanian meatballs and then we'd listen to him telling us what we had to do. Then there would be Wiener schnitzels and bloody mashed potato and lots of red wine and beer. And that was how we would make the time to get him to give us his groundbreaking instruction," Coates said.
"He said we needed more competition at home for athletes and ... he forced everyone to row sculls in singles or doubles.
"So athletes were better races and competitors and the training regimen was much harder." Batschi also changed the selection process.
"I gave everybody in Australia, every club, not just those in the main cities, a chance to participate in the national team," Batschi said.
"I did that through a focus on individual performance - by moving the selection into small boats (instead of allowing crews to qualify in the fours and eights)." As well as increasing the number of regattas and offering a clear path to national selection, he brought previously independent coaches to the same table.
"So we had a very clear system - domestic season, national selection and going to compete internationally," he said.
"It's silly to send someone to the world championships or the Olympic Games if they haven't done the basic preparation.
"I changed the ideology of the preparation of coaches and it was quite revolutionary - the coaches at long last talked to each other.
"The coaches had been with clubs (and) wouldn't talk to each other and everyone thought they had their own secrets." Coates said the result through the 80s and onwards "speak for themselves"."Since then we've maintained our consistency in the top five nations," he said.