Having won gold in the men's pair every year since 2009, and having broken the world record by six seconds in the heats in the London Olympics, and winning heaps of races by open water, the New Zealand pair of Hamish Bond and Eric Murray can be forgiven for looking for some new challenges. So earlier this summer, the pair decided to double up at the 2014 Worlds.
They could have done the single – Bond had beaten none other than Mahe Drysdale in domestic trials at home – but that would have made for some tricky training, so they reasonably decided to contest the coxed pair, enlisting NZ U23 eight coxswain Caleb Shepherd to do the steering. I talked to Bond about how they decided to double up, any differences he noticed between the boats, and who makes the calls now that they have a coxswain on board.
When did you decide to double up into the coxed pair?
I would guess around Lucerne. Lucerne was probably our point of where we decided whether to enter or not.
So six to eight weeks.
Yeah, we haven’t been in the boat long. We were going to see how it went at Lucerne, and if it went according to plan and we thought we could do both or were capable of winning both then we thought we’d give it a shot. Nothing ventured nothing gained, sort of.
The boats have different speeds, different feel, different loads, maybe even different rig or length; what is it like to switch back and forth? Do you have to adjust? When you first get in one after rowing the other hull, does it feel odd?
I don’t get in one boat and think "this is drastically different." With the rig obviously it’s a little bit different between them on the gearings, but essentially the load’s not too dissimilar. The rating might be slightly down in the coxed pair, but not a lot, we're really trying to row them much the same. You have to have a slightly different technique and a slightly different rhythm in the coxed pair, but I feel as though I’ve got enough experience sweep rowing in different conditions, different boats, all sorts of things. You sort of learn what sort of feeling you want no matter what the set up. It was a little bit of a learning experience, but once we got on top of it I don’t think it’s caused us too much trouble, and I don’t think one boat has taken away from the other boat. If anything it possibly added to what we were doing in the coxless pair. Whenever you can build up your knowledge of boat feel and boat dynamics and how things work, it just adds to your understanding of it.
Did you guys hand over the running of the boat to the coxswain?
It’s probably about 50/50. Maybe he’s in charge, but we’ve got powers of veto or something like that. If we’re not happy with what he says, maybe, but as long as we’re happy with what he says it’s okay.
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