Eric Murray and Hamish Bond react after winning the gold medal in the Men's Pair Final A on Day 6 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Photo / Getty Images
Rower Eric Murray was one-half of one of New Zealand’s most-loved and successful Olympic teams – ‘The Kiwi Pair’. Ahead of Paris 2024, he talked to Neil Reid about winning, losing and the best thing he’s used his profile for.
Eric Murray says victory in Paris will open up potential riches for new Olympic heroes.
But, he stresses, our latest sporting achievers shouldn’t let a gold medal define them in life.
Murray – and fellow member of the all-conquering coxless pair, Hamish Bond – knows all about the highs and lows that can be dished up in the event which enthrals sports fans around the world every four years.
Twice (in London in 2012 and four years later in Rio) the duo stood on top of the Olympic medal rostrum, proudly wearing gold medals as God Defend New Zealand played over the PA system.
Given the combination’s supremacy – a stunning history that included multiple world championships and world records – they were a dream for marketing teams looking for faces to promote their products.
The potential of lucrative advertising and sponsorship deals was spelled out to Murray and Bond after their London victory by Rob Waddell; who won gold in the single sculls at the 2000 Olympics.
Waddell also hinted at the potential pitfalls of Olympic success and a higher profile, something Murray hopes our Olympians of 2024 are aware of.
“Being a hero in Sydney and being a rower, he sent us an email saying, ‘Guys, there are opportunities on the back end but just be prepared you are going to give up a lot of your time’,” Murray told the Herald.
“It was quite full on that now you are a recognisable figure and doing things on the back of that, if you carry that onto different things like TV, advertising stuff with sponsorship.
“I think that is what a lot of people don’t realise, that there is a lot of time that you are giving up. And of course, with us going again, how much time can we give up because we are meant to be training?
“You can’t spread yourself everywhere. I would love to, but we don’t have enough time in the day, enough of me, to go everywhere and do things.”
Not everyone who tastes Olympic success in Paris, or receives a cult following an unexpected performance, would be guaranteed a potential marketing windfall.
Murray said sponsorship and marketing was a “really tricky place”, with individual athletes, duos or a member of a victorious larger team being singled out.
“That is just the nature of marketing, that is just the nature of sponsorship,” he said.
“Hamish and I just had something that was a little bit more different in the way we were referred to as ‘The Kiwi Pair’ that just set us apart a little bit.”
For Murray, the doors that Olympic success opened for him include starring on reality TV; something that allowed him to financially help a cause that was close to his heart.
The Kiwi sporting legend’s son, Zac, has nonverbal autism. His appearance on both Dancing With The Stars and Celebrity Treasure Island raised thousands of dollars for Autism New Zealand, the organisation he is patron of.
“When someone says, ‘Do you want to do Dancing With The Stars?’, I was like, ‘Oh, not really’. But then I understand the profile that I can give to Autism New Zealand or the funds we could win from doing the TV show; [and] my time can help other people.”
Winning an Olympic medal was a life-changing moment.
But as the countdown to Paris 2024 ramps up, Murray said it shouldn’t be a life-defining one.
“If you need that gold medal for an identity, you are not doing it for the right reason,” he said.
“You should really want it because it is what you are passionate about and how you are looking at life. That was always the process of what we were doing.
“But at the end of the day, you still have to carry on with life as such. And it is something that I try to explain, especially to athletes if we talk to them.”
Few New Zealand Olympians travelled to Rio de Janeiro with as much expectation on their shoulders from Kiwi sports fans as Murray and Bond.
Given their world domination, they were considered as near as unbeatable as possible by many pundits.
But deep in Murray and Bond’s mind, all wasn’t smooth.
Murray arrived in Rio battered and bruised after a bike crash just two days earlier while the pair were winding up preparations in Switzerland.
The weather around the rowing venue, Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, was unpleasant, leading to waves across the racecourse.
Murray said of the two, he was “always the eternal optimist and Hamish was always the pessimist”.
“And a little of that pessimism was rubbing off on me,” he said ahead of the tilt at back-to-back golds.
“The weather was terrible. So, all of a sudden you are like, s*** this is going to be based a little bit more on survival and also potentially a bit of luck starts coming into it ... like, do you get a better lane than someone else? How is it all going to happen?’
“There are a few of those things that go through your head.”
“The Kiwi Pair” won gold in challenging water in a race that Murray recalls as being “by far one of the least enjoyable races we have ever raced, just because it was so rough”.
A sign of the conditions was that their winning time 6.59.17; a massive 43 seconds slower than the final four years earlier in London.
“A lot of people think it is this magical, glorious moment where everything clicks and you run through your race and it is like, ‘That is beautiful, it is everything I ever imagined’,” Murray said.
“I sort of finished the race and it was, ‘Yeah we won, but that was s*** water’.”
It was still a special moment for both “The Kiwi Pair” and the country.
And both the memories of Olympic success and the associated medals, are things that Murray – who says he is a “pretty personable guy who likes having a good chat” - loves to share.
“My medals are bashed up. I take them to events ... a lot of people never get to see a physical Olympic gold medal, or hold one,” he said.
“But for me, it is share the experience. If I lost that gold medal, I am still an Olympic champion. It is not going to change who I am, [even though] I would probably be a bit disappointed.”
You’d be wrong to think Murray’s Olympic experience was all golden.
While most of us know the duo for their back-to-back golds in London and Rio, before standing on top of the medal rostrum, Murray left two previous Olympics empty-handed.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics, he was part of the coxless four which finished fifth.
Four years later, the crew – which by then included Bond – travelled to Beijing rated as a leading medal contender. Part of that confidence was built around the quartet winning gold at the 2007 World Rowing Championships in Munich.
But they failed to make the medal race, winning the B Final.
When Bond and Murray decided to go it alone in the coxless pair, painful lessons from that campaign were learned.
“I tend to not go [looking in] hindsight ... [but] everyone does it in life and goes, ‘If only I had done this, done that, or bought Apple shares at this price in the 1980s ...’” Murray said.
“The thing about going back there was that we knew no different. We were still reasonably immature, I guess, in terms of high performance and on an international level. We had had one victory, but it wasn’t consistent.
“Going into it we were sort of going through the motions of, ‘I think this is what we need to do’. It wasn’t, ‘I know this is what we need to do’.”
It’s a message that Murray shares when he does public speaking; there’s a big difference in actually how prepared you are if you only “think” but not “know” you are where you need to be.
Once committed to the coxless pair combo, Murray and Bond worked tirelessly on a programme they knew could get the best out of themselves.
That process was clearer to work through given the smaller crew size.
“And the two of us ... Hamish always joked that he was the better rower and I was the second best. And I had to put him straight a few times,” Murray laughed.
“When you put people together who are trying to be the best, and they have the same philosophies and same work ethics, then you can come away with something pretty good.
“That is what we tried to do. And that is what led us going forward.
“That result [Beijing] kickstarted things. We knew how not to do it and now it is about making things consistent and understanding you don’t have to recreate the wheel, you just have to make sure that you understand what needs to be done and do it on a consistent basis ... not be up and down all the time.”
Respect between the two played a huge part in what The Kiwi Pair were later to inflict on all-comers.
As well as the two Olympic gold medals, the duo won seven Rowing World Championships in the coxless pair.
While they combined so well in their boat on race day – as well as spending so much time together in training camps – the pair were complete opposites as people.
“It still does baffle me a little bit,” Murray said.
“We were completely different people. And that is the thing, understanding how either of us worked was always the key to it.
“I feel that one of the biggest attributes you have got to have is respect. And we respected one another.
“As soon as you have that respect for one another, and you have the trust in one another ... all of a sudden you have got something that could be pretty special.
“I had my strengths, he had his strengths and we bounced off each other. We made sure the relationship was very much 50-50, neither of us was really a leader.”
Given his Olympic history, every four years it’s hard for Murray not to think back to memories of pre-Games build-ups and his time at the Athens, Beijing, London and Rio events.
Those feelings have been magnified in recent weeks as members of the Paris 2024 team post on social media as they head to their final training camps.
He thinks back to his earliest Olympic experience when he went away “with hope and luck in the equation, rather than going, ‘We are ready, let’s do this, let’s go get this job done’.”
And checking in and offering support to any team members he knew was on his list of things to do, something he did for Emma Twigg before she won single sculls gold in Tokyo.
Murray was 36 when he hung up his elite-level oars for good.
Life since has been a mix of online coaching and being part of a working group with World Rowing on the growth of indoor rowing.
He took up golf, a sport he loved as a youngster.
But, after being at the top of the world in rowing, he had to learn to temper his expectations when he was on the fairway.
“[Post sport] you have to pull back and be more of a realist,” he said.
“When you are in this environment the joy-line starts getting a little blurred; there is more expectation, accountability, pressure you put on yourself, and outside pressure at the same time
“Even though you love doing the sport, you are getting on it every day and punishing yourself to see what improvement you can get. It is not like, ‘Let’s see how we can get on today. Let’s go have this beautiful paddle on the river’. Every single thing has got a purpose. You slightly lose, this is a social thing and something I like doing.”
He never shies away from sharing his experiences – both good and bad – if they will help others in sports and other areas of life.
“A lot of the time you are looking to be how good a person you can be in your sport. And I feel that if I can take that into my life, which I have done, how good of a person can I be?” he said.
“Can I be helpful? Can I be open? Can I be the best I can be in terms of my relationships or how I am bringing up my son?”
The latter, being the best dad he can be to Zac, is his driving force now.
The pride in being a double Olympic champion is unmistakable when you talk to Murray. But so too is his desire being a great dad and do whatever he can in his role for Autism New Zealand.
“I am trying to do the best for my boy,” he said.
“Hence why I am a passionate person about Autism New Zealand. If I am in a position where I can make some change, that is what I am here for.”
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 30 years of newsroom experience. He travelled to Sydney and Athens to cover the 2000 and 2004 Olympics respectively.
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