Rowing: Special night to honour legends

Rowing gold medal twins Georgina Earl (nee Evers-Swindell) and Caroline Meyer (nee Evers-Swindell) at Caroline's home in Cromwell. Photo / Mike Scott

New Zealand rowing's highest achievers will be celebrated at Lake Karapiro tonight.

Rowing New Zealand are marking several notable achievements in one hit, the high points including honouring double Olympic champions Georgina Earl and Caroline Meyer who received the Thomas Keller Medal last year, the supreme honour in international rowing.

The coxless pair twins, who triumphed at Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008, are the first New Zealand rowers to win the medal and RNZ has decided to kick off a couple of initiatives and bundle them into one special event.

The inaugural Sir Don Rowlands medal for distinguished service to rowing will also be awarded, named after one of the most influential figures in the sport, who died two years ago. It won't be an annual award, but rather when it is deemed appropriate.

RNZ are also to present medals to every New Zealand rower to have competed at an Olympic Games or world championship.

The first of the, to date, 407 is Darcy Hadfield, who won the single sculling bronze medal at Antwerp in 1920. His son, Rex, 81, will be at the dinner on behalf of his father, who died in 1964.

"For two years we've been working on legacy initiatives," RNZ chief executive Simon Peterson said. "We got each generation of rowers together and put the concept to them around the legacy programme and got full endorsement".

Peterson said he had been aware there was a gap in rowing in terms of acknowledging its past and its most notable athletes.

"I felt the history of the sport wasn't formalised.

"We looked at New Zealand Rugby and what the Black Caps are doing with the numbering system on their clothing. Our intention is to recognise their contribution to where the sport is today".

The three medal-winning crews from Rio last year - gold medallists Mahe Drysdale, and peerless coxless pair Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, and the silver-medal winning equivalent, Rebecca Scown and Genevieve Behrent - will be honoured as will four rowers who enjoyed Olympic success before retiring; Murray, lightweight Peter Taylor and double sculling London gold medallists Joseph Sullivan and Nathan Cohen.

The surviving members of New Zealand's first Olympic champion crew, Ross Collinge, Dick Joyce, Warren Cole and cox Simon Dickie will be notable guests at the evening. With the late Dudley Storey, they won the coxed four gold in Mexico in 1968.