Daniel Topolski

Who is Daniel Topolski?

Daniel Topolski is an author, former rower and rowing coach, and summariser on BBC television.

The son of painter Feliks Topolski, he attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London, before going to Westminster School and New College, Oxford. At Oxford, he rowed in both the 1967 and 1968 Boat Races.

Topolski was finishing coach for Oxford University's Boat Race crew from 1973 to 1987. Of the fifteen Boat Races in which he was coach Oxford won twelve including an unbroken run of ten victories between 1976 and 1985. This run of success and its continuation after Topolski's departure brought Oxford to a point in 1992 where they had won sixteen of the last seventeen races and were within one victory of equalling Cambridge's overall total of wins.

He won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1989 as the co-author of True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny—the story of the 1987 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race.

Topolski is married to actress Susan Gilmore, and their daughter is the jazz singer Emma Topolski.