It was business as just-about usual at the Hawke’s Bay Rowing Club as the budding new wave of Emma Twiggs and Tom Mackintoshes hit the Clive River on Sunday morning.
Less than 12 hours after watching their club heroes in the Olympic Games singles sculls finals — Emma Twigg winning the silver medal in the women’s event and Mackintosh fifth in the men’s final — it was all go, a 7.30am start with about 60 young hopefuls, the biggest pre-season training numbers in years.
Originally scheduled to be only 12 minutes apart, there had been hopes of a Hawke’s Bay golden half-hour, but they saw fastest-qualifier and defending champion Twigg just beaten by Karolien Florijn, of the Netherlands.
More than an hour later, with traffic delaying the men’s finalists’ arrival, Tom Mackintosh drifted to fifth after being a medal hope in third place at the halfway mark of 1000m.
Of course, everyone had hoped for more — two golds would have been nice — but disappointment didn’t cut it, either at Napier bar the Pavilion, where club stalwarts watched the two races on Saturday night, with a Twigg training boat made by Puketapu boatmakers SL Racing slung from the ceiling, or on the crisp morning at the river in Hawke’s Bay the next morning.
They knew. Rowing training is about as disciplined as it gets and the result, both getting into finals, was “fantastic”, they “left nothing out on the course” and they’d “done everything they could” were common acclamations.
“We’re very proud,” former Twigg coach Cedric Bayly said, echoed by such others as new club manager and former national elite squad member Paddy McInnes, and Michael Harrison, one of the club’s 9 or10 coaches, who observes that while club members have won five gold medals, Twigg’s silver was the first.
They’re thanks to the efforts over the years of Keith Trask, the Evers-Swindell twins, and Twigg and Mackintosh, gold medallists at Tokyo in 2021 in the women’s singles and men’s eights respectively.
Rowing is New Zealand’s, and Hawke’s Bay’s, most successful Olympic Games sport.
McInnes says it’s looking good for the future as the club steps up its promotion in schools, with at least seven Napier and Hastings high schools represented at the second session of the six-week programme.
It’s where athletes start preparing for a season that includes about seven regattas for the busiest of the Hawke’s Bay club members, including the 2025 national championships on Lake Ruataniwha, Twizel, on February 18-22, and the secondary schools Maadi Cup regatta on Lake Karāpiro on March 24-30.
McInnes says it starts with getting used to the environment and the intricacies of crewing at a novice level, and eventually finding a place or a level.
One already on the pathway is 17-year-old Napier Girls’ High School student Aishling White, who’s in her third season and has already tasted gold medal success at national championships in a four and an eight, and who has the oars between her teeth looking for more — hopefully a rowing scholarship on an American campus and, one day, at the Olympic Games.
Already with contacts with rowing for US college in mind, she says: “My goal, if you’re looking good enough, is to be in that position where they would send me home to trial for New Zealand.
“The way I see it is, rowing gets me overseas and gets me the opportunity.”
She’s already seen some of the necessity — training “eight times a week” when the whips are cracking — and says: “It’s a lifestyle, I’ve adopted it, rowing is my personality.”
Rowing enabled her to meet people like now good friend and Woodford House student Lydia Burns who, soon to turn 17, wants to “medal” at the national championships.
McInnes assesses the weekend overall, saying: “I think everyone’s over the moon, it’s hard for some, but to have both Emma and Tom in the finals at the Olympic Games was fantastic.”