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Jürgen Gröbler is a German rowing coach, formerly the Olympic team coach of East Germany and later of Great Britain. He has coached crews to Olympic gold medals at 11 consecutive Olympic Games from 1972 to 2012.
Having coached East Germany to success since 1972, when Germany was reunited and the East German national sports administration collapsed in 1991, Gröbler moved to Britain, where he was employed by Leander Club and the Amateur Rowing Association. Controversy surrounded the appointment, given the suspicions that drug use had been rife in East German sports and that any senior coach would have been involved or had knowledge of the drugs programme. In an interview in 1998 he admitted that he had "difficulties" with the thought that drug taking may have caused medical problems for rowers, and that he had given "snippets" of information to the Stasi, the East German security organisation. Steve Redgrave defended him, blaming the East German system for the drug use, rather than Gröbler personally, in keeping with Gröbler's own statement that "I have to live with what went on in East Germany. I was born in the wrong place. It was not possible to walk away."
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