The Kiwi Pair - the story behind our world-beating rowers

The Kiwi Pair

Hamish Bond & Eric Murray

Within hours of crossing the line in their gold medal race at the Rio Olympics, Hamish Bond and Eric Murray were putting the finishing touches to their autobiography, The Kiwi Pair, which goes on sale on Friday 26 August.

 A candid insight into their unique sporting partnership, The Kiwi Pair details the graft and sacrifices that have underpinned Bond and Murray’s success on the water over the past eight years, the intense demands competition and training places on them physically and emotionally, and how their chalk and cheese personalities have actually worked to keep them at the top level of their sport.

The Kiwi Pair provides an insight into the extreme training regime that has kept them at the top ever since, and their shared motivation to make rowing history.

 Despite their different personalities, Bond and Murray boast an incredible work ethic and common competitive streak. “There was never a day when I thought, ‘I might not work hard today’,” says Bond. “I didn’t always like training, and sometimes I straight-up hated it — climbing into the boat and slipping my feet into shoes still wet from the last row, or coming down the lake on a long stretch into a blasting headwind, my hands numb and blistered. We called those our ‘championship rows’, they were the ones we believed our opponents would be either physically or mentally not up to.”

Winning in Rio, the pair say, was a different feeling to securing their first Olympic gold medal in London four years ago. They admit to being ‘more relieved than anything else’.

Reflecting on their victory in the book they consider what it is that makes their partnership special. Murray says: ‘For the last eight years, every decision Hamish has made has prioritised his rowing. There was not a day when I didn’t think to myself that he could probably do all of this with someone else in the boat. I’m glad he didn’t exercise that option.

“We spoke about that, too. He said the one thing he knew was that no matter how hard he went, I would be able to follow, and we both knew that there was never a time when I would let him down in that boat .”

Five times Olympic gold medallist, Sir Steve Redgrave, has written the Foreword for The Kiwi Pair, which Bond and Murray worked on with Sky sports reporter Scotty ‘Sumo’ Stevenson.

 

More about the authors:

Eric Murray was born in Hastings, 1982, and is one half of the New Zealand coxless pair that took six seconds off the world record and won gold at the London Olympics. In 2011 Murray set a new world record on an indoor rowing machine, 18,728m in one hour on a Concept 2 Dynamic Rowing Machine. On 17 January 2012 Murray raced five-time men's single scull world champion Mahé Drysdale in the single scull event, winning by less than half a second. Murray was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2013 New Year's Honours, for his services to rowing. He is also a registered marriage celebrant.

Hamish Bond was born in Dunedin, 1986, and is one half of the New Zealand coxless pair that took six seconds off the world record and won gold at the London Olympics. In the same year he graduated from Massey University with a Bachelor of Business Studies degree (majoring in finance) and a Graduate Diploma in financial planning. Bond is also a big fan of cycling, and in 2009 he raced at elite level alongside fellow Olympian Sam Bewley, competing in the six-day Tour of Southland for the Zookeepers-Cycle Surgery team. Bond was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2013 New Year’s Honours, for his services to rowing.

 Published - 26 August 2016

$40.00
Penguin NZ