Rowing: Evers-Swindell twins have their own hero - their coach

By DAVID LEGGAT

Georgina Evers-Swindell uses one word to describe his influence - "huge".

Soon after she and sister Caroline had been given the first Olympic rowing gold won by New Zealand women, Dick Tonks sat back with a cool beer or two, able to reflect on a job well done.

He's known the feeling before, having been an influential hand in single sculler Rob Waddell's 2000 Sydney Games gold medal.

The twins success on the Lake Schinias course at the weekend capped off three years of total domination for the Waikato sisters. They last lost a race in Lucerne at the world championships in 2001.

It's an intriguing relationship, but it has worked all round.

It began in 2000 when the sisters were teamed with the laconic former Olympic silver medallist.

Georgina gave a good insight into how the relationship has worked, and just for a moment gets a little emotional.

"He's not the guy to sit down and have big, deep meaningfuls with you," she said.

"But he says these little things every now and then and you grab them and hold them because you know they're valuable."

She insisted they are a three-person team.

"It was neat that Richard was the first person to congratulate us out of the boat.

"We could not have done it without him. He's a legend. We've been so lucky."

And what of the coach? His analyses tend to be short and to the point. The 53-year-old, who won a silver medal in the coxless four at Munich 32 years ago, does not go in for lengthy breakdowns of how things went right or wrong.

But there's undeniable admiration for the way the twins have gone about their Olympic campaign.

"They go back to 1997-98 as a combination. That's a lot of years they've put in and in the last four they've trained real hard," he told the Herald.

"They had to consider the Germans, who train extremely hard, and this year the girls have flogged it to death."

He puts five elements into the package which has made them Olympic champions: mental capacity, training ethos, very good technique, an extremely competitive nature on the water; and courage.

Tonks tells a story he reckons gives an indication of their strength of character.

After a training camp near Hazewinkel, Belgium, Tonks thanked the chef at their house for his hospitality and cooking.

"He said 'good luck for the Olympics'. I said 'thanks for that'. "Then he said, 'the twins. They will be all right'.

"Now I doubt he'd even seen them on the water. It was just from watching them and the way they conducted themselves round the dining room.


"When they're on the water, you see people stop and watch them.

"There's something about them on the water, just the whole rhythm, the way it looks, the movement."

Ask him to compare his feelings in the moments before Waddell's and the Evers-Swindell finals, and he points out that the twins were overwhelming favourites. But surely world champion Waddell was too?

In Tonks' mind, no.

"The twins performed a lot better in their Olympic year than he did. Until Rob won his semifinal in Sydney it could have gone either way."

He insists the twins were more consistent than Waddell, in terms of times and performances, in their respective Olympic gold years.

"The twins are far harder, have a stronger mental attitude, more focused."

So how does a coach with the knack for tailoring Olympic champions spot one?

Tonks is a bit "aw shucks" about this. He's not a trumpet blower, but it essentially works along these lines: you have a training programme, you set it up and see how the rowers apply themselves, physically and mentally.

Tonks - who got into coaching when his club captain at the Union club in Wanganui asked him to help out close on 20 years ago - is a good example of how New Zealand rowing has thrived by making sure knowledge gained over generations is not lost.

"Billy Webb, at the turn of the century, won the world professional title in Wanganui. He knew my father. My father coached me. The Munich eight of 1972, the [world and Olympic titles] coxed crews around 1983-84, they all help out, come and do some coaching."

Tonks, coaching fulltime at New Zealand Rowing's base at Lake Karapiro, says he hasn't given much thought to the future - "It's been a pretty full-on four years".

But the Evers-Swindell sisters have.

Says Georgina: "It's taken us six or seven years to get here, and if Richard wants to carry on coaching us, we want to carry on doing it."

Twins' roll of honour

* 2001: Second, quad scull, World Championships, Switzerland

* 2001: Second, double sculls, World Championships, Switzerland

* 2002: First, double scull, World Championships, Spain

* 2003: First, double scull, World Championships, Italy

* 2004: Gold, double scull, Olympic Games, Greece