Nick Krygios (L) and Hamish Bond. Photo / Getty Images.
Nick Krygios (L) and Hamish Bond. Photo / Getty Images.
OPINION:
If you ever needed anyone to explain Nick Kyrgios to you, then that person arrived this week in the form of Hamish Bond and his retirement.
You see, one of these things is not like the other. Look over there, whipping up the crowd; there's one of Australian tennis'bad boys, complete with the haircut, the jewelled earrings, the gold chain and the attitude.
Over there, a polar opposite, is Bond. He loomed up at my shoulder a few years ago at an awards dinner. He and rowing partner Eric Murray were guests of honour that night but Bond was late. The dinner and speeches had started and, in the way of these things, someone had filled the empty chair; there was nowhere for him to sit.
So Bond just stood there, at the edges of the room, conservatively groomed, unassuming, looking like an average joe. Didn't say anything, didn't try to attract anyone's attention. This went on for some minutes. Finally, aware his humility and quiet intelligence was making him invisible, I grabbed one of the awards staff walking past: "Would you get Hamish to his table?"
Imagine Kyrgios in the same situation. He would likely have shouted, screamed, chest-bumped the wall, smashed a racquet and fired a bread roll at an innocent child, making it all better by presenting the sobbing child with a hastily-signed napkin Kyrgios didn't need.
The point – you knew there'd be one, didn't you – is credibility. Bond won three Olympic gold medals, eight world championship gold medals; he and Murray presided over that astonishing eight-year, 69-race unbeaten period when their coxless pair boat was a jet ski to everyone else's paddleboard.
Top mainstream sport rarely sees such maintained superiority. US 400m hurdler Ed Moses won 122 unbeaten races between 1977-1987, incorporating two Olympic golds (the US boycotted the 1980 Moscow games), four world records and world titles.
But rowing is an endurance sport where the athletes don't race every week; perhaps a better comparison is with the amazing Emil Zatopek (four Olympic golds, the last after a last-minute decision to run his first marathon), voted the best runner of all time some years ago by Runners World magazine. He won 75 straight races between 1948 and 1951, all races between 3000m and 10,000m.
That's the kind of rarefied air we are talking about, breathed by Bond who famously took a sabbatical from rowing, tried his hand at road cycling and ended up with a bronze medal in the Commonwealth Games. Then it was back to rowing, where he was the glue in what he himself calls his crowning achievement – the surprise gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics with a young, largely untried eight.
In rowing, some will point to Britain's Sir Steven Redgrave as the sport's all-time best – with his five Olympic gold medals and nine world championship golds, most in the same coxless pair event contested by Bond and Murray; fair enough.
Redgrave also won in a coxless four but never ventured into an Olympic gold medal-winning eight. Nor did Zatopek ever try his hand at cycling.
Bond's will, skill and colossal determination to make the best of his gifts – and to risk reputational dilution by trying something completely different – also fuels his credibility.
Kyrgios? He is ranked 115 in the world in singles; his doubles partner Thanasi Kokkinakis is 103. So they have to indulge in firing up a crowd of nationalistic Aussies to put off the opposition with noise that actually interfered with play.
Nick Kyrgios of Australia reacts in his Men's Doubles Quarterfinals match. Photo / Getty Images.
Kyrgios, in past times, has been able to beat anyone on his day. But, these days, both components of the "Special K" partnership are pretty much spent forces in the superior discipline of singles. So they have to supplement talent with what some call showmanship, entertainment or gamesmanship – all just euphemisms for relying on something other than mere ability to win.
Tennis Australia will love him because Kyrgios has diverted attention from their ridiculous Novak Djokovic and Peng Shuai goofs.
But Kyrgios will never have a 69-match unbeaten streak against top opposition over eight years; he will never make the Commonwealth Games in another sport. He will never, as Bond did, make himself the exposed centre of a crew that needed him to find the almost indefinable mix of human chemistry and boat-on-water physics that makes a rowing eight fast.
His is not a quest for (and achievement of) perfection and then diversification, as Bond's was. His is a matter of clinging to the lifebuoy of his career and making a lot of noise as the big ships of world sport pass him by.
Cross-sport comparisons are odious. I probably shouldn't be trying to compare Kyrgios and Bond.
But because their efforts have come in the same week, it is possible to conclude that we have seen the difference between a rousing great and a great rabble rouser.
