John Fenning

At the 1908 Olympic, John Fenning and Gordon Thomson won the coxless pairs, representing Leander, and later in the afternoon they were both in the Leander crew which lost the final of the coxless fours to Magdalen College, Oxford. Fenning, who was also a member of the London Rowing Club, was a medical student at London Hospital at the time of his Olympic victory but he did not qualify as a doctor until 1917. He had entered London Hospital Medical College in January 1904 and the records of London Hospital indicate that “his prolonged, 13-year medical course was the result of failing examinations rather than war service.” When he eventually qualified, the 32-year-old Dr. John Fenning initially practiced in the Home Counties but he moved to the Midlands in 1937 where he spent the rest of his life.