Jane Mander resident Arlene Baldwin with photos of her brother and his team. Photo / Ryman Healthcare
Jane Mander resident Arlene Baldwin with photos of her brother and his team. Photo / Ryman Healthcare
Jane Mander Village residents have been on the edges of their seats this week cheering on the teams in the Paris Olympics.
And none more than resident Arlene Baldwin, who vividly recalls spurring on her brother 52 years ago, albeit while listening to coverage through the wireless as he and his rowing team won gold.
Then a Christchurch Hospital ward sister, she was ironing at the time.
“We heard the race but, of course, it didn’t air on TV until a few days later because everything was so delayed,” she says of the 1972 Olympics.
Baldwin’s brother was Trevor Coker, a member of the team that become known as “the golden eight” after winning gold at the Munich Olympic Games.
As they stepped onto the podium to be presented their medals in Germany, their families were proudly cheering them on back home.
The memories of the team and of Coker would later prove poignant, particularly for Baldwin. But in September 1972, she, along with the rest of New Zealand, were focused purely on the rowing results.
Now a Ryman’s Jane Mander Village resident in Whangārei, Baldwin reflects on Coker’s rowing career and legacy.
Aged 24 at the time, she remembers her family’s excitement as they listened to the Olympic coverage.
“My sister-in-law, who was married to Trevor, was on the Interislander ferry and when the captain found out that she was trying to listen to the race, he put the radio on and invited her up to the command deck,” she recalls.
When the eight triumphed, Kiwi pride was felt all over the country.
Sadly, in 1981, Coker, a science, maths and physics teacher at Christchurch Boys’ High School, died, aged 31, from a brain tumor, leaving behind his wife and young son, with whom Baldwin still holds a close relationship.
Jane Mander resident Arlene Baldwin with photos of her brother and his team. Photo / Ryman Healthcare
From a young age, Baldwin has loved watching sports.
Coker and Baldwin’s father, Frederick, was a regional rower and the six kids would watch their father’s races on the Whanganui (formerly the Wanganui) River.
Their mother Ella would sew outfits to match the colours of their father’s club, the Aramoho Whanganui Rowing Club, essentially forming their own cheerleading squad.
“She used to make the boys green and gold t-shirts and put us girls in little gold dresses with gold bows in our hair, and we would be taken to the riverbank to watch the rowing.
“All my life I’ve followed sports, we were a sporting family, really. Everyone played sports.”
Eventually Frederick would watch his own son row at Lake Karapiro, the internationally renowned rowing venue, and win national titles.
After the 1972 games, Coker took home a bronze medal with the eight at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. He won the New Zealand national rowing championships in the rowing fours in 1974, 1975, and 1976, and with the eight in 1976.
Along with his Olympic Games and rowing championship teams, Coker won the Supreme Halberg Award at the Halberg Awards in 1971 and 1972, named after Murray Halberg, the middle-distance runner and three-time Olympic Games gold winner.
The golden eight (and coach).
Coker’s legacy lives on through the Trevor Coker Memorial Shield, awarded to the top New Zealand Secondary School Boys under-18 squad each year.
The skiff used at the 1972 games is displayed at the New Zealand Maritime Museum in Auckland.
After his Olympic Games’ wins, Coker coached rowing and taught at Priory Grammar School for Boys, a prestigious boys school in Shropshire, England.
Two years after Coker died, Baldwin visited the school that he taught and rowed at.
“I met one of his friends and he took me down to the boat shed. They have named the boat that the boys won in, the Trevor Ivan Coker boat. So, there’s plenty of lovely memories over there.”
Rowing is this country’s most successful Olympic sport with 29 medals and New Zealand is the reigning Olympic Men’s Eight Champions. But while support for the sport was just as strong in the day, getting to the event was another story.
It was a real team effort to raise the funds to get the rowers over to Germany, Baldwin says. “It wasn’t funded the way they are today; they had to go and sell raffle tickets a couple of days a week. So, (Trevor) had to row and teach.”
Baldwin moved into Jane Mander Village two years ago, making this year’s Olympic Games her first watching the games with the support of other residents. She’s excited to create her very own ‘Olympic Village’.
“When there’s something special on down at the main area of Jane Mander, they put the big screen up and we enjoy getting together for the conviviality of it because other people are there to share it with.
“I think that we’re very lucky to live in Jane Mander Village. We’re getting older, and it just makes sense. We’ve made some nice friends here and we enjoy it.”
