KEY POINTS:
Twenty years after they dominated the kayaking regatta at Seoul, Macca and Ferg will be reunited at the Olympics.
Paul MacDonald has recently linked with former world champion and Olympic silver medallist Ben Fouhy. As Fouhy is a carded athlete MacDonald will join him in Beijing as his
full-time coach, and Ian Ferguson, who coaches son Steven, will be on hand.
Macca and Ferg last appeared at an Olympics together at Barcelona in 1992, but it was at Seoul in 1988 where they established their Olympic legend. During that campaign, they won gold in the K2 500m and silver in the K2 1000m. MacDonald also won bronze in the K1 500m.
Four years earlier in Los Angeles they also cleaned up, being part of the winning K4 1000m team with Alan Thompson and Grant Bramwell, and winning the K2 500m. Ferguson, whose four Olympic golds remain a New Zealand record, also won the K1 500m, though many felt their efforts four years later carried more weight because of the Eastern European boycott at Los Angeles.
"The fact we're going to be together again at the Olympics 20 years after Seoul makes it pretty cool," MacDonald said.
The story behind how he came to coach one of New Zealand's most talented athletes is pretty cool, too.
MacDonald had done the odd session with Fouhy but nothing had been formalised. MacDonald said Fouhy was approached by a fellow kayaker who wanted MacDonald's number to work through some technical issues.
Fouhy said he would check with MacDonald first but in the meantime decided he would rather not let a competitor have the use of MacDonald's expertise so signed him up instead.
"To this day, I still don't know who the athlete was," MacDonald laughs.
The two were together at Lake Pupuke yesterday for the sprint nationals, however a brutal weather front postponed racing until today.
"We tried it out for a while to see if it would work for him and if it would work for me and after a while, I said 'yeah, I'm in, boots and all'."
Fouhy, 29, parted with coach Mark Sutherland last year after an ordinary European campaign and intended to go it alone in search of Olympic glory.
"What I'm looking for in Macca was someone who has been there and done that and knows how to win," Fouhy said yesterday.
MacDonald gave up his job with Orca to focus on Fouhy's campaign. It was a leap of faith in some respects because Fouhy has earned a reputation as an athlete who demands total commitment from his coaches as he gives to the sport. In Athens, for example, he thought Ferguson was spreading himself too thinly and wanted more one-on-one help than he was getting.
"I haven't been improving quite quickly enough for my liking," he said.
"It's been frustrating for me and through some changes in circumstance, Paul has been able to come in and take me on full time which is very timely for me."
MacDonald was known as a proficient paddler but, more than that, an "animal" according to Fouhy who maximised every physical ounce he could.
"He's a hell of a talent and deserves a shot," MacDonald said. "He is an incredibly driven, incredibly determined, focused athlete and you know what, I'm not the easiest person to work with either because I'm a bit different. He and I have struck a real chord and I enjoy working with him.
"Because of his yearning to be the very best that he can, he presents a challenge. He will give me a verbal clip if I'm not on my game but as yet we've had none, it's been brilliant."
MacDonald said it was important early for them to put down a demarcation line between personal and professional.
"We got everything out on the table and said this is a purely professional relationship. We are trying to squeeze into a year what some athlete-coach relationships have been working through for several years.
"We've got to be right onto it in a pressure-cooker situation and both be right on our game and verbalise anything that is going through our heads."
MacDonald said the same principals he and Ferguson applied when they were the dominant figures in the sport still applied.
"Funnily enough, they still have a kayak, they still have a paddle and they still have to go fast over either 500 or 1000 metres; they just go a hell of a lot faster," he said. "Technology has changed; the boats have changed, the paddles have changed but, hey, it's still two arms and two legs."
Kayaking has been in the news for the wrong reasons lately, with chief executive Richard de Groen recently leaving his post, with funding frustrations never far from the surface.
However, MacDonald said it was an exciting time for the sport with the emergence of talents like Fouhy and Steve Ferguson, Michael Walker, Troy Burbidge and Erin Taylor.
