Olympian's son is pinned down

The mystery of New Zealand rowing Olympic pioneer Darcy Hadfield has been solved - and there's a indelible link with Tauranga, as sports editor Kelly Exelby writes.

It's taken more than 18 months, but Darcy Hadfield, New Zealand's eighth Olympian and one of this country's rowing greats, has finally been honoured for his involvement in the 1920 Games in Belgium.
Rex Hadfield was presented with his father's Olympic pin at his Greerton home by Turin Winter Olympian Lorne DePape, recognising Darcy's involvement at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp.
De Pape, part of the New Zealand Olympians' Club, was first in Tauranga in mid-2009 honouring 40 Olympians from Bay of Plenty. The 2008 Beijing Olympics marked 100 years of New Zealand Olympic history and saw our 1000th Olympian wear the silver fern.
He returned last year to give Tauranga's Katie Calder her pin. Calder, who skied cross-country last year in Vancouver, was Olympian No 1113.
In a moving tribute to his father, who died in 1964 at the age of 78, Rex Hadfield said he would have been chuffed with the belated recognition. DePape said Hadfield was the earliest Olympian they had honoured.
"I'm just so chuffed Rex was put in touch with us. To find a living child of New Zealand's eighth Olympian is amazing - when we did our series of presentations around the country almost two years ago, which focused initially on getting our living Olympians together - the earliest we found in the Bay of Plenty and Waikato was Olympian No 62, which took us back to 1952."
Hadfield, born in 1889 at Awaroa Inlet near Nelson, was New Zealand's first-ever rower at an Olympics, blazing a trail by winning single sculls bronze in Antwerp.
He became the third New Zealander to hold the professional world sculling championship when he challenged and defeated Christchurch's Richard Arnst in 1922. Each rower put up £200 for the race on the Whanganui River, which Hadfield won by 10 lengths.
Three months later, again on the Whanganui, he lost his title to the Australian Jim Paddon.
Rowing New Zealand's Richard Gee said it was a different era of single sculling a century ago, one of full professionalism where massive money changed hands - legally via prizemoney and plenty of off-water gambling.
Crowds of 120,000 crammed the banks of rivers, including the Zambezi in Africa and Whanganui, to watch the scullers duke it out, often over distances of three or four miles.
"This was the great era of sculling, we're talking 1882 to about 1920, where they'd put two or three scullers on big rivers and let them fight it out.
"It isn't overstating it to say these guys - Darcy, Arnst, Jack Kelly, Jim Paddon - were like prizefighters. They were the heavyweight champions of the world - fully professional and internationally famous.
"Physically (at 1.80m) Darcy wasn't big by today's standards but he was all muscle and a beautiful technician, a blueprint for what we've got today. He was also rock hard, that's what he was known for by the Brits and Americans."
Hadfield was wounded in World War I at Passchendaele. Post-humously inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1990, he never spoke of his war years.
"He was a very forceful man who fended for himself after leaving school in standard four, and the war wasn't ever part of his conversation."
He was one of 19 entrants for the singles at the Royal Henley Peace Regatta in July 1919, winning easily and disposing of 1912 Olympic champion William Kinnear. New Zealand athletes competed and won medals as part of Australasian teams at the 1908 and 1912 Olympics but Hadfield was in the first official four-strong New Zealand team to Belgium, joined by sprinter George Davidson, hurdler Harry Wilson and teenaged swimmer Violet Walrond, our first female Olympian. Walrond's father, Tui, who was also her coach, went along as chaperone.
Hadfield finished third in the sculls final behind Jack Kelly of the United States (the father of actress Grace Kelly, who would later become Princess Grace of Monaco) and Brit Jack Beresford.
Rex said Kelly's backers invited his father to a showdown in the US after the Olympics.
"It was going to be the Olympic champion [Kelly] against the Henley champion [Hadfield], but when dad broached the trip with mum she said she was sick of being married to a front page headline and said she would bugger off if he went. Dad didn't go and that was the beginning of the end of his career."
Rex moved to Tauranga 22 years ago and was a handy cyclist before the inevitable shift into rowing. But he never beat his dad, despite many head-to-head battles on Waitemata Harbour.
"Dad was just such an unbelievable competitor, even into his 60s. We'd have these huge races from the Waitemata clubhouse up Okahu Bay and back. I'd go hard and he'd just go harder and I never got past him.
Hadfield's Olympic bronze ended up with the family of Rex's eldest brother, although it was just this week presented by Rex's nephew, Mark Hadfield, to the New Zealand Olympic Museum in Wellington, where it takes pride of place as their oldest Olympic medal on display.
The rowing circle will be completed next week when Rex is guest of honour on New Zealand coach Dick Tonks' coaching boat on Karapiro, where he'll meet four-time world champion single sculler Mahe Drysdale.