MURRAY’S BIG REGRET
The Kiwi Pair legend reflects on the gold medal that never was -
Eric Murray is adamant he has no regrets about retiring from rowing. ’’No. No. No.’’
But get him to talk for 10 minutes - it’s not difficult - and he’ll admit there’s part of him that wonders if he and Hamish Bond could have won three Olympic gold medals together, with potential gold in 2008 to match the gongs they claimed in 2012 and 2016.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Murray and Bond were part of the New Zealand men’s coxless four that failed to make the A final after winning the 2007 world championship gold. That duo, along with Carl Meyer and James Dallinger, recorded a faster time in winning the Beijing B final than the gold medallists did, but that was no consolation.
Murray said he looks back and ponders if he and Bond should have begun their legendary partnership - which saw them never beaten in the coxless pair after teaming up full-time in the boat months after Beijing - a year earlier.
‘‘Hamish and I were the fastest pair going into 2008, and I always look back on that going ‘we should have raced the pair, we should have done it.’ That’s something you look back on now and go ‘Ah’’’
Nathan Twaddle and George Bridgewater won bronze in the men’s pair in Beijing, but Murray remembers he and Bond beating that duo at the North Island club champs in early 2008.
Murray hung up his oars last Sunday but it’s a sign of how driven he was for excellence that that evening he was still pushing marks to me that he and Bond achieved that exceeded their best-known record of 69 consecutive wins in the pair at Olympic, world championship and World Cup level.
He sent a picture of a hand-scrawled page that lays out another 29 victories the duo recorded together at other regattas - the two races that gave them the coxed pair world title with Caleb Shepherd in 2015, NZ domestic events, Holland Beker and Henley - that took their unbeaten streak to 98.
There’s more than a hint he regrets not taking that mark to 100.
The timing of his career raises the other ‘what if?’ for the 34-year-old.
‘‘I think I was four years too early,’’ Murray said. ‘‘And I reckon Hamish was bang on. ‘‘I was there [in the Rowing NZ set-up] from 2003, Hamish was there from 2006-07 and so the funding was there then for you to train full-time, whereas I went through a whole period, right from 2001 when I turned up to my first summer squad academy-type thing, that you had to work and row. ‘‘So you were in a very amateur position. ‘‘It wasn’t until 2006 when we won any medals, and that’s when Hamish started. He’s 30 now, and he could effectively have another two Olympic cycles, easy. I probably could have had another one had my heart been into it.’’ But his heart wasn’t. ‘‘I was being pulled in three different directions [family, rowing, work]. ‘‘I’ve done everything I wanted to in sport. ‘‘Am I going to be one hundred per cent committed going forward? I couldn’t see myself being that.
‘‘Rowing New Zealand’s been amazing with the flexibility we’ve had in our training programme, but I thought I didn’t see that happening if I was part of a wider group [like the men’s eight crew] - just because it can’t be.
‘‘Even though I’d love to do the big programme .. I thought, you know, I’m just going to leave it and get on with life.’’