Here’s a theory. Tauranga’s new mayor, the now-retired Olympic gold-medal-winning rower, Mahé Drysdale, wanted to be mayor because he needed to win another competition.
I really should have known better than to run that one by him. It drove him right back into campaign mode. “I always like to be competitive, but I think it was more than competitiveness. It was just kind of what I honestly believed I could do for the city. I felt like Tauranga was a beautiful place but there were a lot of things that could be improved.”
I had to tick him off twice, reminding him that he had won. He could stop campaigning. You try ticking him off. He simply ignores you.
He does like a challenge, obviously. “That’s what I’ve brought through my sporting career. It was all about challenge and trying to achieve something that you’re not sure you can do. That’s what gets me out of bed every morning.”
Asking him to examine his need to win is like asking him to examine his navel. He doesn’t do navel-gazing. He’s too busy doing stuff. When he goes on holiday, he doesn’t go to actually have a holiday. He races around doing outdoorsy, sporty things that no doubt have an element of competition. He says his wife, Juliette Haigh, who won a rowing bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics, always returns from these so-called holidays saying she needs a holiday.
Does he ever exhaust himself? “No. I exhaust Juliette. She’s kind of like, ‘We need to slow down.’ And I’m just someone who likes to be busy and likes to be out doing stuff.”
That stuff does not include rowing. He hasn’t rowed since he retired in 2021. This seems odd, but also entirely obvious. The odd bit is that the boats he trained and rowed in for so many gruelling years seemed to be an appendage, an attachment of his body, almost. So why would you want to row as a hobby, when there is no possible medal at the end of a row? If you are Mahé Drysdale, you wouldn’t. There would be no point. And he is all about points. He did think: “I’ll go back to rowing when I feel like going rowing. And I just haven’t felt like it yet.”
Also, “It’s not that fun when you’re not that good at it any more. So you’re judging yourself against as good as you were.” And against his wife, possibly. She has taken up rowing again and competes in the Masters. In a twist you might not have predicted, she is now the better rower. “Absolutely. Yes.”
Bonding over business
His politics. He says he probably leans towards centre right. He’s an accountant and worked as a financial consultant after his rowing career. “I don’t like to see money wasted.”
He learnt about money and hard work and business from his grandfather, Bob Owens, who started the Owens Group trucking company, which he later sold to Mainfreight for, presumably, pots of dough. Drysdale was very close to his grandfather, who was knighted for services to business and the community in 1997.
They bonded over the board papers of the family company. Board papers? He was about 14 at the time. Surely, board papers are very dry and boring at any age. He loved them. “I really enjoyed learning and I loved business and sort of understanding it.”
He must have been an oddly earnest kid. He is an oddly earnest adult. Presumably you have to be to win Olympic gold medals. Famously, he won a bronze in 2008 despite suffering from a severe stomach bug. He was seen vomiting after the race and had to be stretchered into an ambulance. He managed to get to his feet and take to the podium to receive his medal. Of course he did.
As an athlete, you don’t really get any hatred. As a politician, people judge you a lot quicker.
The psyche of the single-scull rower. It looks intensely lonely. One man. Two oars. One little boat. A single goal, which is to be the first guy across the finish line. In fact, he says, it was rather crowded in that little boat, or at least inside the head of the rower. “I’m never alone. The only time it’s only me is when I’m competing …” There is the coach, his training partners, the physiologists, the physiotherapists, the masseuses … You row with calloused hands, with fatigue, with that stomach bug, you train with a fractured rib, with a bad back. He is six foot seven. Height is an advantage in a single-scull rower. Height is a disadvantage for your back.
Rowing is among the most demanding of Olympic sports. It is not only tough physically but mentally. The mental battle is a large part of the psyche of the elite athlete. You don’t give up. It’s not even in the vocabulary of the elite athlete. Being stubborn to the point of pig-headedness is. If you ain’t pig-headed you’re not going to be a winner.
“I think my mum would tell you that if you ever wanted to motivate me, tell me I can’t do something and I’ll find ways to prove you wrong. Winning is my happy place.”
Moving house
The July election followed 31/2 years of rule by a commission, after the dysfunctional Tauranga City Council was suspended. There were grumblings, after Drysdale announced his mayoral run, about the fact he didn’t even live in Tauranga. He and Juliette and their three young kids – they are four, seven and nine – live in Cambridge, which is basically one big club for rowers. They have a lifestyle block of 21/2 hectares with four cows, a pig, three sheep and chickens. They will move to Tauranga at the end of the year and are looking at houses.
He’s as keen as mustard at the prospect because he is always keen as mustard once he has one of his grand ideas. Juliette and the kids took some persuading. “It took a little while to get them on board. I understood it. I guess I’d committed my life to rowing and Juliette was incredibly supportive … and taking up the slack at home. And I’d spent a couple of years kind of being quite available to the family and then I had this crazy idea to uproot our lives and move to Tauranga and take on a pretty big job. So, yeah, she wasn’t over the moon to start with.”
She’s probably used to his crazy ideas by now. “I think she accepts me for what I am. Pretty driven and I like to take on big challenges.” Did I happen to mention that he’s exhausting?
The Owens are pretty much royalty in the region. An English immigrant, Bob Owens grew his transport empire from small beginnings: a waterfront business at Mt Maunganui. He was on the Bay of Plenty Harbour Board from 1962 until it was replaced in 1988 by Port of Tauranga Ltd; he served another five years on its board. There is a Bob Owens Retirement Village; an Owens lounge at the racing club; Mt Maunganui has an Owens Place. There is a Bob & Joy Owens Scholarship system across seven schools.
Owens was Mayor of Tauranga for three terms from 1968, including one when he also served as Mayor of Mt Maunganui. His grandson donned his grandfather’s mayoral chains the day he was sworn in. His wife wore his grandmother Joy’s mayoress’s chains. That might have been an emotional moment. Let’s not get carried away. “It was a nice little family moment.”
A not-so-nice little family moment: Drysdale stood against his uncle, Doug Owens, son of Bob and Joy, for the mayoralty. There is nothing like a very public family spat to spice up a mayoral campaign. Owens accused his nephew of being a “patsy prawn” for a local property group he claimed were trying to “take over Tauranga”. He claimed Drysdale was a member of the group. He also queried Drysdale’s qualifications for the mayoralty. Ouch?
Drysdale whacked back. He said he had never been a member of the group, “unlike Uncle Doug”. And that his uncle was “claiming a vast conspiracy” in a “tragic attempt to become relevant”. Yep. Ouch all right. They might as well have had a duel with oars in the centre of town.
Drysdale later retracted his whack back. He says now: “Look, I regret some of the words I used. He did come out with unfounded allegations and I just felt that it was very unfair. But that’s life. I changed that wording and have moved on.”
Which is by way of saying, firmly, that I should move on. He says they have had “a few discussions” since the election. He insists, “We’re a very close family.”
Still, you can’t imagine they’ll be having a very close Christmas together. A shame. It would be fun to imagine a turkey fight. I didn’t put this flight of fancy to him. He does not entertain flights of fancy. He can really be quite stern. Did I happen to mention that he’s earnest?
Is he given to having spats with people? “Not really. I think I get on with most people. And as I say: I don’t want to have spats with people. I want to get on and focus on the issues we need to sort out.”
There is nothing like a very public family spat to spice up a mayoral campaign.
Made for each other
Early on, he had a famously fractious relationship with his coach, Dick Tonks, who is reported to have once said, “Good coaching is a dictatorship and I am a dictator.” He is, says Drysdale, “another person who doesn’t really talk. He just gets on and does his job.”
He is also talking about himself. That grumpy early relationship is what happens when two people as stubborn as each other bang their heads together in the competition to see who has the harder head.
It is an odd sort of love story – a depiction of their relationship I’m confident neither of them would arrive at. But it is. At one stage, they had the rowing equivalent of a lover’s tiff which resulted in Drysdale going off in a huff, for about 10 seconds, to train on his own. Later, they arrived at a truce born from mutual respect. It is entirely possible they were too alike, both being people who don’t really talk and just get on and do their respective jobs.
After Tonks was given the order of the boot by Rowing New Zealand, Drysdale went into bat for him. He attempted to broker a deal that would get Tonks his job back. He thought he’d pulled it off and then Tonks was waylaid by a TV news reporter. The head of Rowing NZ, he said, " couldn’t run a bloody corner dairy”. Which, as Drysdale says, “completely blew everything up”. You can see that it was inevitable that they would end up being mates. They were made for each other.
Here is another example of the new mayor’s self-described stubbornness. During his campaign he said that, if elected, he would “disclose conflicts of interest”. Does he have any financial interests in Tauranga? His family does, through the family trust of his grandfather. He’s a beneficiary to some of the trust’s assets.
“I prefer not to disclose those.” Shouldn’t he, as mayor? “Anything that I directly have an interest in, I will. That will all be in the pecuniary interest register.” So, he doesn’t want to tell me now. “No. No. Not really.”
There was no point in pushing this any further. When he digs his heels in, they remain dug in. From a 2020 NZ Herald piece: “It’s rare you get much emotion out of Mahé Drysdale.” Is that about right? “Probably. As I’ve got older and had kids there’s probably more emotion. But, you know, I’m a pretty level-headed person and don’t have massive emotional swings usually.”
He doesn’t give much thought to what his public profile might be. That, too, would involve navel-gazing. “I don’t really know. I think I’m fairly trusted and respected for what I’ve done. That’s probably the difference, coming into politics. As an athlete, you don’t really get any hatred. Everyone kind of likes you. As a politician, it’s much more polarising. And people judge you a lot quicker, I think.”
Not that he cares about criticism. When you are six foot seven and have the broad shoulders of a former rower, you can shrug just about everything off.
He got into rowing at the University of Auckland. He liked the culture, which was drinking. “I say, well, drinking got me into rowing and rowing very soon killed my drinking.” Rowers, he says, do everything to excess. They might not have a drink for 11 months of the year, after which they might go on a huge bender.
What sort of mayor is he going to be? Will he be more Wayne Brown or more Tory Whanau? “I’m not sure I want to be either.”
Whatever sort of mayor he turns out to be, you can be sure he will be an excessively driven one.