July 31, 2024 • 42 mins
To celebrate the Olympics, on this episode, Murray is joined by double Gold medalists, Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell (now Georgina Earl and Caroline Meyer). Deaks asks them about their road to Olympics success, sibling rivalry, Dick Tonks and Caroline reveals she didn't always want Georgina in the boat.
Murray Deaker has been interviewing the biggest names in sport for 40 years. 'Murray Deaker’s Sporting Lives' will interview legends of sport, uncovering their stories. Full of memories, theories, and opinion. And no nonsense! 'Murray Deaker’s Sporting Lives' podcast brought to you by Gold Sport.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway, the
leading manufacturer of premium golf clubs, balls and accessories worldwide.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi Murray Deeker here, Welcome to my podcast, Murray Deeker's
Sporting Lives. During my career, I've interviewed some of the
biggest names in sport. I'm thrilled to bring you this podcast,
talking to sporting legends and giving you a look into
their world. The Paris Olympics are underway, so we stick
(00:32):
with the Olympic theme in this episode, with not one
but two of our Olympic greats, Georgina and Carolyn Evers Swindel.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
While interviewing sports stars for over forty years, I had
a number of photos taken. Most of them are gathering
dust in our locker. Only three have made it to
my office wall. One of them has been entitled by
my less charitable friends as the Thorn between Two Roses.
(01:09):
It was taken up Baypark halftime in an NPC match
where I interviewed the Roses. Do you girls remember that?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Hi, Murray, Nice to chet vaguely, vaguely remember at Murray, Yes,
it was.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Known as a fundraiser type thing and rowing was hard
up at the time. Craig Ross was running rowing at
that time, and I remember coming down your profile was
absolutely huge, and it's two thousand and three. Do your
kids realize how big you were in terms of profile.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
It's hardly sort of hardly ever talk about it at home,
and it's funny. It's something that only really comes up
every four years. I think my youngest came home from
primary school use today and was mortified because the teacher
had made her stand up and tell her friends and
classmates what her mother had done, and she didn't want
a bar of it. So it's not really talked about.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
They don't. I don't think they understand, no.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And yours don't understand.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I don't know they.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
As Georgie said, it's kind of in every you know,
every four year kind of thing for them. I don't
think they're really interested. I think they're probably more interested
in themselves. I do remember my oldest must have started
school in twenty and sixteen and he he came home
one day and they obviously were talking about the Olympics
at school and he'd had no idea and he came home.
(02:39):
It wasn't the first thing he mentioned, because we'd driven
home and he was midway through afternoon tea and he
kind of looked at me and he said, Mommy, do
you know that you went to the Olympics And do
you know that Auntie Georgie and you week to the Olympics,
And do you know that you want to gold medal?
And I was like, you're starline, yes, and he was like, oh,
oh okay, and then he went off. And then the
next day he came home and he said that you
(03:00):
and Auntie Georgie had a photo with the.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Flag and so that was kind of cute.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And then I guess that, you know, he's back to
doing his lego and as Thomas the trained scene.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
But yeah, that's about. That's about. I think they know
a little bit more now, but more interested in themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
See, this is fascinating though to me, because I recall
vividly how high your profile was and now here you
are living in Cromwell, and that's interesting for two North
Islanders to end up in Cromwell, not the biggest place around.
So how did that happen for a starter or how
did you get there?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Just a husband's thought. I see him mind?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
How is from Clyde and it was always the plan
to move down to Central And look, I didn't know
anybody here at the time, but it's just such a
such a lovely place to live.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
It's it's it's an easy place to bring up kids.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
It's beautiful, We're spoilt with lakes and ski fields and everything.
It's just it's Yeah, I didn't know much about Cromwell,
but really really grateful that I love down here. Yeah,
and I was a saying Sam and I were in
christ Church, but a job opportunity came up and so
we probably should have moved further south for his job
(04:20):
at Caroline and carl here and I needed to have
some family around me, so we stayed in Cromwell too.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
And it's been pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
You know, all the kids have gone through the primary
school together and it's cool for the cousins.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
How hard was it to be a Superstar Because in
this little country, that's what you both were, Whether you
want that badge or not, that's what you were at Superstars.
How hard is it to be that one day and
the next day, changing nappies and looking after kids and
them screaming and yelling and getting the flu and everything
(04:55):
that kids do.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Oh, my children don't scream on not ice cream and yell.
Do you know what it was?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
It was easy, and it was I always probably before
I wanted to win a gold medal.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
I wanted to be a mum.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
You know, I had my dolls and played all those
games when I was little, and so it was I
was very happy to to to marry Karland and you know,
very grateful to have our children. And I think, I
think the thing about rowing is that it's all about you.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
You have to put yourself first the whole time.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And there's lots of different reasons why I decided to retire,
but one of them was that I wanted to put
other people in my life first. I wanted to support Karl.
I wanted to be more there for my family. You know,
my parents, they'd always been following us, and we'd always
had to, you know, put us, as I said, put
ourselves first.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And so I had.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I think it was just time and that I that
I wanted to look after and and not make myself
the priority. And so that's it definitely happened becoming a mother.
It's all about the kids, and I have loved being Tom,
Vicky and Jimima's mum rather than Caroline the rower, so
(06:12):
I much preferred that tag to be honest.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Georgie, yeah, very similar to Caroline.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I think rowing was really intense and obviously we loved
it and we had a great one in Beijing. But
I think we're both ready to, as Caroline said, just
to change the focus in our lives, and it is
incredibly selfish. I think as an athlete people talk about,
(06:39):
you know, making sacrifices, but I don't feel like we
made any sacrifices. I feel like we made choices to row,
and to it was an honor and a privilege to row,
and it was our family probably that made the sacrifices
so that.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
We could do that.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So I think we just both felt like it was
time and we were definitely ready to do something else.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
You both married former Olympic rowers. Did your commitment to
rowing men that you didn't meet any other males or
is it just that you think that rowing blokes are
the best around?
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I love you.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
So Sam didn't quite make it to the Olympics. Isn't
it as an athlete. He was a supporter, but he
wasn't in the team with us. I think when you're
in your twenties and you're living and rowing and everyone's
keeping the same schedule, I think it helps when there's
you know, boys and girls all doing that sort of
same sort of thing and they understand each other. I
think actually helps. I think the boys understand us and
(07:35):
get us and what we need. So I think that
was one of the main.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Reasons why we ended up with rowers as partners.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, how did you get started in rowing? Where were you?
And who started you?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
We were at school in Hook's Bay and we just
a friend suggested we start. Well, I saided first it
was just I knew nothing about rowing, but for me,
I mean we were both made keen on any kind
of sport at school, and so yeah, I remember walking
into the classroom one morning and my friend or our friend,
(08:12):
who had an uncle who coached in Gisbone, had suggested.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
That she go along to an open day at the
hooks By Rowing Club, and she asked me.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
I think I walked into the classroom obviously before Georgie
did that day, and she asked me and I said, yes, please,
sounds cool, And honestly, first row that April open day
at Hawks Bay and loved it.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
So yeah, couldn't get enough of it.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Were you at a Rudolph Steiner school?
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Yeah, we were at the Hastings of Stinas School.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, which was unusual. Was that wouldn't be a big school.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
No, probably it went through from we were at kindergarten
right through until seventh form and I think there were
probably about three hundred kids around that. But yeah, it
was it was a I mean, it was just school
for us. We didn't know any difference. We loved it
as a parent. Now I feel like it's a great
school philosophy, educational kind of philosophy, and I wish that there.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Was one down here for our kids.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
But yeah, it was just school for us, so we
didn't probably appreciate it as much as we should have.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Well, I heard about you both a long time ago.
We had a guy and I can't remember his first name,
but his second name was Thompson, and he was a
rowing reporter and he went along to regatter and of course,
you know, you'd have people come on your ZB scoreboard program,
and the interesting thing was that most of them were
(09:40):
volunteers and they would try and sell their own sport,
and he was into selling rowing. And I can recall
it vividly, saying these ever Swindell girls, Murray, you mark
my words, they are going to win Olympic golds. And
I thought you were a network mate who are coming
(10:00):
in from the sticks. But you must have had a
lot of early success, did.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
You, Caroline did at school?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, we were I went to
one Marty pub and it went well, and you know,
the selectors saw it, and then Georgie started and I
think I was selected just on my abilities of my
twin sister, and.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
She hated it.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And I remember we were training in the double skull
in the junior double in hoop Spay and we've been
selected to go to the Junior Worlds in Scotland that
year and it was a middle of winter. And if
I ever Caroline didn't want me to be there. Krolyen
wanted to be in a single skull. She didn't want
me sitting behind her. And if I ever once said
(10:51):
it's so cold, I don't want to go row, she
would turn around and say, don't need quit. And she
said that to me a few times, and so I
think I just learned to shut up. But that's how
we got. Caroline definitely had success at the Muddy Cup.
I didn't start rowing until my last year at school.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Yeah, I wasn't very nice. I wasn't very nice, But
it's all true.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
We're told that you learn more from your disappointments than
you do from your successes. So tell me what you
learned from missing out on qualifying for the Sydney Olympics
in two thousand.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Oh so much, Murray, so much. And you know, we
went there.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
We had we'd been in the women's eight in ninety
eight and ninety nine and we'd failed to qualify. And
then we're pretty lucky. We were taken out of the
eight and we were put into a double skull. Rob
had obviously qualified for Sydney and Richard was coaching him,
and the selectors put us in double skull and said, well,
(11:57):
they put us in a double skull because it would
go be a good training partner for Rob. It was
either a pair or double, and Richards the leets go
for a double because it's you know, you'll keep up
and push Rob along. So suddenly we found ourselves. You know,
with Richard and the coach boat and Rob beside us,
this legend, you know at the sky that we've been
looking up to all these years, and we were having
(12:20):
the best time. You know, everything was improving. We won
a world we went away. We won a World Cup regatta,
which is, you know, after coming last or second to
last and the woman's eight races for the previous two years,
to then go and win a World Cup. Our first
our first regatta was just a blow our socks off, really,
and then we had a bit more training and we
(12:42):
went off to and we thought we had everything that
we did. We thought we had everything sorted with Richard
and Rob, and we went off to the qualification regatta
and we had to come first or second, and we
came third. And I think I just remembered that. I
just remember thinking, you know, you can have the best
coach in the world and the best training partner in
(13:02):
the world, but you actually have to want it more
than anything else. And I probably hadn't learned that. There's
probably just an expectation there that I had everything I
needed and that's all I needed to do and work hard.
But actually in a race like a qualification regatta, which
is one of the worst kinds of regrettis there are
you have to really dig deep and you have to
(13:24):
really want it more than anybody else out there, and
I possibly didn't, and that's quite hard for me to
say that. But there's anything that I learned from that
experience of failing to get to Sydney, it was it
was that you can't just you can't just rely on
rely on.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
People around you. You have to want it.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
And then the hard thing was we weet to Sydney
and we watched people that we're beaten that you know
that summer in Europe do really well, and I remember
just kicking myself in the stands, thinking this isn't fun.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
So I learnt a lot.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
You mentioned Richard's name and we're talking Dick Tonks. I'd
like to pretend that I came down to interview you
both in how wrong at that time, but I didn't.
I came down because Dick Tnks wouldn't be interviewed by anybody.
And when Craig Ross rang me up, I said, and
he said, we've got the Eviswindell Twins and Rob Adell.
(14:22):
They'll be interviewed by you. And I said yeah, and
and he said, and that's all, And I said, no,
it's not. If you want me, mate, you get that
Dick tonks and he can speak into a microphone for
a change. And I did the interview with him, which
I remember quite vividly, the type of interview it was. Gee,
he was a feisty character, wasn't he?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Was?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
He What made him such a great coach?
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I think for Caroline and I he read us really well,
and he could read athletes. It's really hard to know
from a coach's perspective, what makes it from an athlete's perspective,
I think, well, first of all, it was like caw
I said, just privilege and we were so excited to
be selected in the double one, to get to have
him as a coach and Roll as a training partner.
(15:06):
But Richard, I think, over the years, taught us to
about training hard. He talked about us our goal each
week was to do more k's on the water than
our competition around the rest of the world.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And you don't he's ness, you know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
But I remember on Christmas Eve and at Carapiro would
do a one k test and then the a one
hour test, and then he'd send us home on Christmas
Eve and say, right, your competition might not be training tomorrow,
so you jump on the er and do another ergo
on Christmas Day. So he just taught us about wanting
to be the best and to train harder than anyone else.
(15:43):
And he also though, I think he could read us
well and he always just had us right on the edge,
and he pushed us harder than we could ever thought
we could be pushed, but he had us right there,
so but he didn't tip us over. If he tipped
us over, we would be able to come back in
the afternoon and do the afternoon session. But he just
had us right there, improving, but not pushing us too
(16:03):
hard that we couldn't carry on with the rest of
the week. I just think he could read us really well,
and he was You might have thought he was fisty
in his interview, but for Caroline and I he was
actually just really calm.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
And we would get.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
So wound up and nervous before racing, and he would
just be really despite how he was feeling inside, he
would come across as a really calming influence and it
just worked really well with Richard, and.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yeah, we were really lucky. Yeah, I think we just
had so much respect for him. We'd watched him, we'd
watched him with Rob while we were in the eight.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
And then we were so grateful and so respectful of
him that we wanted to do it for him just
as much as we wanted to do it for us.
So it was about making Richard happy. It was about
you know, he put so much time into us and
so much effect. He was always there, like, always waiting
for us, And yeah, it was about it was about,
(17:02):
you know, achieving for him and achieving goals for him,
achieving goals for us. And just because it worked for
us doesn't mean that his coaching or his style works
for others. But Richard, Richard worked for us, and we
could not have achieved what we did without him.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I feel like they talk about ex factors and crews
or teams, and I think he was our expector. I
think he took us from being a couple of New
Zealand rowers to winning a couple of Olympic gold medals.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
And I think he was the reason we were able
to achieve that.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Georgia and I there were some crews that wanted to
you know, they wanted to have involvement with their training program.
They wanted to know what they were doing. They wanted
to have him, but Georgia and I just wanted to
be told. I've always said on a sheep, I'm not
a leader, I'm happily follow and we had so much
trust in Richard that we just we just waited to
(17:57):
be told what to do, and you know, whatever he said,
we did because we knew that that's what we needed to.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Do to succeed.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's Sporting Lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
After the disappointments in Sydney, you cracked the World Championships
winning there, but then the big one two thousand and
four Athens, and I guess if you had to win
a gold at the Olympics, Athens is the place to
win it, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Lots of lovely history obviously in Greece, and it was
lovely timing for us to be able to go to
that games.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I think with Athens there was I think we were young.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
I think I'm really proud of the way because we
were young. I guess I'm proud of the way we
handled the pressure. There was a lot of pressure there's
a lot of expectation. And I think about this when
I when I talked to my children, people say, oh,
you're going to win. Yeah, it's easy, you've got it.
It's easy. You're going to you know, fly home. It's easy.
It's easy. It's easy, you know.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
And that didn't help. That just adds that just adds
pressure to what already is quite a high pressure situation.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
So I think I was really proud of the way
we handled that pressure. I only just handled it. It
was a long week. We qualified at the beginning of
the Regretta and then we had six days of no racing,
just little rows, little little bits of fast stuff, but
just little basic rows. And then we had the final
and it was a hard, hard week and I mentally, mentally,
(19:31):
mentally it was really.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Hard, really really hard week.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But somehow we handled it and we and we crossed
the finish line and we managed to you know, win,
and it was I'm really proud of the way we
handled that pressure. I'm not proud of the way I
didn't celebrate. I should have been more openly happy with
what we'd achieved, but I think I was just more relieved.
But I do I do regret not sticking my hand
(19:55):
up in the air and saying wahoo. But I'm just
really proud of way we handled the pressure.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, well, two thousand and eight. The final is a
race that no one who saw it will ever forget.
You know, we've seen fabulous races that people talk about,
the big horse races, and they talk about the Thriller
at Manila, and contests that come right down to the wire,
but it doesn't get any closer than one one hundredth
(20:24):
of a second. I want you to tell me about
that race where you came in that close in front
of Germany.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah, it's the race. The build up to the Games,
we'd had a shaker at the last World Cut Regatta
in Poland. I don't know if it was six weeks
before Beijing and we hadn't made the A final. We
won the B final. We were in tears. We cried
all the way back to New Zealand and we pretty
much turned around the airport and said to Richard, we
(20:56):
don't want to go to Beijing just to wear a
blazer with the first and on it.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
We don't want to go just to make up numbers
and a team.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
We only want to go if we're competitive, and after
that performance, we don't believe we are, and we were
ready to walk away, and he just turned around and
I think, you girls can can do it. And so
we spent six or eight weeks at home. We were
really lucky we had that training squad with Mahe and
the peer and some amazing.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Athletes to compare ourselves to.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
So we spent a lot of and we it wasn't
about working harder, It was about changing our mindset, I
think in those in those weeks, and I think that helped,
and we slowly got sort of more confidence and got
some boat speed again and went up to Beijing and
had an amazing heat race and again very similar to Athens.
(21:44):
Won the heat and had this long week of mind
games really and getting prepared for the final. But I
think we went into the final and all in our
previous rowing history, we'd sort of wanted to dominate right
from the first stroke and be in front from the
start to the finish, and we'd raced hard and that's
how we'd raced. But sort of times had change and
(22:04):
our competition had changed, and so a race plan for
Beijing was just to get out and get into a
really good rhythm and stay in our boats, stay in
our own bubble. And I don't know where we were,
but at five hundred meters we definitely weren't in front.
I think we're more like fifth, you know, we were
only in front.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
The only time we're in front, as Krolyne said, was
when we cross that finish line. So we had more
to prove to ourselves than anything else in that race.
We didn't care so much about results. We cared about
making sure that we race as hard as we could
and we and we were needed to prove to ourselves
that we were better than our performance in Poland. So
(22:43):
it was just a really internal thing. I wasn't aware
of any There was no pressure on us because we
performed so badly. I don't think anyone thought we would
lucky to make the final, to be honest, so there's
no pressure. Mum and dad week to watch, but probably
thought they were not going to mop up tears instead
of celebrate with us. But it was just about trying
to prove to ourselves. And then we got to that
(23:03):
last five hundred meters and we were in a medal
position and so we thought that was great. So we
just carried on giving it everything, and we were kind
of I think we were kind of in second and
we were like, oh, my goodness, we're going to get
a silver medal.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
This is amazing. And now the DBAT team came at
us and we're like, hang on, we want our silver medal.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, And when we crossed the line, and it might
have felt like a long time to wait, but we
were just who, We've got a medal, and after Poland,
we never thought we'd be in that position.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
So we were really happy with our race.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
We're really happy with how we'd raced it, and we
were happy with the outcome. Obviously a lot happier now
that it's a gold one and not a silver or bronze,
but at the time that's what we were thinking.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Extraordinary race was not you know, we didn't have a
clue what you're going to hear at home. It was
so close. People saw it in a different way. Did
you know you'd won when you went over the line?
Speaker 4 (24:03):
No, Well, the.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Germans looked really happy, didn't they. The Germans looked really happy,
and so we just assumed that they knew something that
we didn't. But no, I don't, I don't think I
think I was surprised. I think I had to dabble
check with the umpire who came over.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
We couldn't we couldn't see the score board from where
we were on.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
The lake, and he could hear the cheering but didn't
know that it was for New Zealand, and so it
wasn't until the umpire boat came over and see New
Zealand you've won, and we were are you sure.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Well? You're retired after those games? Was it important to
go out at the top?
Speaker 4 (24:37):
To be honest, I think we would have retired either way.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
It was lovely. It's lovely to obviously retire as Olympic champions.
I think though we both we were both really ready,
we hadn't talked about it. My many regret is that
if we had talked about it and had known, I
think I would have there's a paddle that you do
from the medal ceremony back to the boat park. I
think I would have taken the long way back from
that paddle and just sort of savor the moment a
(25:01):
little bit in the double with Caroline if I knew
that was our last time in a boat, But so
we hadn't talked about it. Before the Olympics, but I
think we both knew that we were ready to go
and do other things.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
What did you learn about yourself as a person from rowing?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I mean, obviously lots of things, Murray, lots of things.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
But suddenly, I guess, is just just achieving, just if
you want to achieve a goal. And I just you know,
it was relentless. Training was relentless. Every day is the
same thing, you know, knackering yourself, but worth it, like
worth it for that feeling that you get when you
cross the finish line. Work worth you know, every every
(25:43):
stroke of hard work or whatever it was, was worth
the feeling that you get when you achieve your goal,
when you when you win the race, when you have
a perfect row, it's all worth it. And I guess
that is a big thing for me, Like, you know,
it's worth all the hard work that you that you
put into something. You know, when things are looking but
(26:04):
hard and a bit miserable, it's you know that it's
it's for a good for a good reason. It's going
to feel good when you achieve your goal. And I
think that's one thing that I learned from it. Yeah,
I mean, I don't know what I learn about myself.
I just learned some valuable skills. So the team, the
team aspect of it. We were in the woman's eight,
(26:25):
as we said, early on in our careers, and Carolin
and I and a couple of others were really young.
We're still in the early twenties. There were some girls
in that boat that were a lot a lot older
than us, and you learn pretty quickly that in a team,
and it doesn't really matter what you do, that you
don't have to be friends. And necessarily they were doing
definitely doing different things to us in their time off
(26:47):
than what we were doing.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
But you just have to And it's like in the
double with Karen and.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
As a twin sister or was it just as a sister,
you know, probably seventy percent of that time we worn't
happy with each other. It was an intense environment where
in there's a little bit of carbon fire in a
middle rocky lake and we're trying to keep it balanced
and we want everything to be perfect.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
So you're not always mates.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
But I knew and you learn with your team you
don't have to be mates with all good friends or
do the same things and when you're not in the boat.
But I knew that every time Caroline put her blade
in the water, she was going to give it one
hundred percent and that she wanted the same goal as
I did. So as long as you respect and have
common goal and trust your teammates, and this can be
(27:32):
in anything in life, then that's that's the most important thing.
So I think we learned lots of valuable skills through
through rowing and our time and rowing that can be
used in other aspects of life, and that we can.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Try and pass on to also our children, to try
and get them to understand as well.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And like Caroline said, I if you want something bad enough,
I think they're slowly as they get older that the
children are slowly realizing and I can you know we
can if they want something bad enough, they just have
to put the time and the work it and that'll
help them try and achieve that.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Well. How much of an advantage was it to be
twins and a double skull.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Like I said, we both came into it with similar
mindsets and similar ideas about training, harm and what we wanted.
But you look at any sort of combinations that have
been together for amount of time, and they I mean
Hamish Bond and Eric Murray are a good example, you know,
they spent so much time together and were amazing and
(28:31):
had such incredible achievements. So I think combinations, it's just
time together. Maybe initially right at the beginning, being so
similar in our ideas and our approaches to training and racing,
that might have helped, But over time, I don't think
there's much more of an advantage.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
What we're on the topic of being a twin. What
are the good things about being a twin and what
are the bad things?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
It's hard, we're you know, it's four girls in our family.
It doesn't really feel any difference just being a sister.
Sometimes it was. It was pretty frustrating when we were
growing up. Apparently according to mum and dad, you know,
ever since day dot it was a competition, and I
think sometimes that's great, and I think, to be fair,
that must have played a big part in how competitive
(29:22):
we were, and that must have helped our rowing. But
it also got pretty exhausting and pretty frustrating at times, and.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Just as right for an example, with rowing.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
We had to go out of our way to spend
less time as possible together. So instead of taking a
car from the same flat down to the lake every day.
We took separate cars, so we had to go out
of our waiters to try and have some alone time.
But as Georgie said, like what was frustrating for us
could have been good. Could have been good for us
as athletes, you know, we would you know, everything was
(29:55):
a race. It was like you've got dropped off at
the gate and it was a run up the drive.
Because we were at this same class at school, had
the same friends, had the same news. So it was
hooker get to month first to tell her what happened
at school, and that used to drive us, not especially
for the person that came second. But at the same time,
I remember training in the gym there was a lot
of weights work for a few years there for rowing,
(30:17):
and you know, Georgia and I I don't know if
the other girls in the squad realized, but we were
just trying to outdo each other the whole time. Who
could lift heavy weights? Who could call a stronger?
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Erg was it was?
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And I guess if you've got an identical twin doing something,
then you can straight away say well if she can
do it.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
It's pretty much why I started rowing, you know, Caroline was.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I was stuck in the car watching her get on
the bus at Clyde and Hook, Spain, and when she
was at school and she was off to Carapio for
the weekend, and there was all these boys getting on
the bus as well, and all these lovely looking fun
girls and they were off to row. And then she
came home with medals and I was like, well, hang on,
if she can do that, then I can do it.
So its a lot as countless and a lot of
what helped us, also incredibly frustrating.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Well, we're coming up and enjoying the Olympics. I want
you to compare the environment and the occasions of a
World championship for rowing. Compare that to the Olympics.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Oh, the Olympics.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
It's an identical regatta, I think, Well it was for us,
wasn't it. Well, World Championships a lot more flags, more
guns around. But then rowing was normally we were out
of the village because we.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Were both Athens and Beijing.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
We had called satellite villagers and there was just a
few of us, a few countries at a hotel in Beijing,
so we were kind of kept separate. So for the
actual regatta part, and luckily Rohwan's the first week, so
then as soon as Rowan's finished, we get to go
(31:50):
into the village and then it's just this completely different experience,
isn't it. I mean, like, obviously we don't have that
at a World Championships, the whole village.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Yeah, I think as right as as Kal.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Visually, you walk into a World champ and anyone can
walk into the boat park, or that we could back then.
Now when we went to Athens, I remember walking into
the boat park and there's a line and men with
guns and so straight up with visually you've got these
huge differences. Suddenly it's this big deal. I think as
a roller we have a world chance every year, but
(32:22):
the Olympics is the pinnacle of our career and that's
what we're striving for. That's what we're training for every day,
and we do these cycles every year and.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
That the goal is to perform well at it at
Olympic Games.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's sporting lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
The Olympics, Now what do they mean to you?
Speaker 4 (32:52):
We're looking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
So my son was up this morning at seven thirty
to watch the sevens boys play against South Africa.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
I think it was so it's going to be hard
to tear ourselves away and get the kids to school.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
But they I think for me, it's I love the Olympics,
and it doesn't mean you get to watch these sports
that we never normally get to watch, and you're watching
the best in the world do their things. So it's
amazing what we get to watch over the next you know,
a couple of weeks, and it's funny you do things
(33:27):
like this, Mari. People were suddenly interested in what we did.
It seems like in a different lifetime ago and some
old memories come up and it's lovely to have this
opportunity to talk about our Olympic experience.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
But for me now it's.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
It's just getting to watch like we do when we
were little, watching some coo athletes do some cool stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
One of my favorite comments about the Olympics is Vale Adams,
and you will recall that she was beaten by a
drug cheat and she passed the comment I may have
a slightly role, which she said to drop her forgotten
that the truth of the whole thing basically is that
you know, there are elements of the Olympics which have
(34:12):
hurt and the drug cheating thing must be on the
back of people's minds from time to time. Did you
ever think about it?
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I tried not to.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
It makes me sad if I think about it too much,
but I tried not to. I think the way I
look at it, Murray, is if I'm knick and neck
with another roller in the middle of a race and
I'm feeling, you know, I'm feeling absolutely naked, and I
know that there's still one thousand meters to go, and
there's a chance that I might be racing someone who's
(34:46):
been taking drugs, then straight away they've got an advantage
over me, and mentally, that's really hard thing to think about.
So I try to think, No, everyone in the race
is clean, and therefore we're equal, and there's they've got
no advantage because we've all been able to train every day,
and we've all got you know, similar boats and similar
(35:07):
similar ores, and so I don't I've never I think
we were lucky, but I'm probably a little bit naive.
As I said, I just tried not to even bring
that into the into my into my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
There was a medal that was awarded to you in
twenty sixteen, some considerable time after he had retired, called
the Thomas Keller Medal. What was it? No other New
Zealand has got it? I don't think.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I think I think had it since since. Yeah, yeah,
since it's really good question, Mary. It is just recognition
for our rowing career and International Rowing Federation. Yeah, you know,
to be recognized in New Zealand for what we did
was it was amazing. But I guess for the international
(36:00):
growing body to recognize as well, I think they give
it to you to retired athletes. I think you have
to be retired from the sport, so to be recognized
internationally was really lovely.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Do you still have an involvement in rowing? No, you're
out of it.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I'm highly sympathetic to swimming and rowing parents because of
all those early hours in the morning. Swimming parents have
to run them their kids to the pool, and rowing
parents do the same. Tell me about your mum and dad.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Well, mom and dad were just mum and dad, right,
And it's not till you become a parent yourself that
you realize how lucky you are.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
They were awesome.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
They there's for girls and mum try to hard us
to get us all to ride Pony's horses, and she
managed to persuade two sisters, but Caroly and I didn't
want a bar of it. So, as I said, looking
back now as a parent, I can see that they
never once, apart from pushing the riding thing, they never
(37:00):
once pushed us to do anything else. But whenever we
said we want to try basketball, we want to join
the cycling, we want to do.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Tennis, they supported us one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
And they were our taxi drivers, so never pushed us
in any way, but supported us fully and continued to
support us even once we had left home and we
were training Cambridge and we'd been slept in the Woman's eight,
but couldn't fund ourselves, couldn't pay for our rent, couldn't
pay for our picture, so mum and dad continued to
(37:33):
support us. And of course it's not until you get
it sort of a world ranking and rowing that you
get any funding. So I think all of us in
the Women's eight had t shirts made up said proudly
supported by our mum and dads, because we seriously wouldn't
have been there if it hadn't been for them. So
they they were number one supporters, and it was lovely.
Once we know did make the double one, continue to
(37:56):
sort of compete overseas, Mum and dad got to come
and watch us. So yeah, they they were awesome. They
are awesome.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
If you had a message, both of you, for young
New Zealand women who are battling hard to get to
the top of whatever sport that they're drying, what would
that message be.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
It would just be make sure you're enjoy what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
I think, as Georgie said at the very beginning of
this interview, for rowing, for Georgie and I, it was
a privilege. We were doing something we loved. We never
felt like we were sacrificing anything. So you've got to
have that, like you've got it's got to be something
we would And then you know, when we started doing well,
we were getting, you know, paid for what we did,
(38:44):
and it was like, my goodness, we're doing We're suddenly
getting paid to row. This is like a dream job.
This is this is amazing. So you've got to have
you've got to be passionate about what you do. And
but it's just a guess, like I said before, it's
just setting yourself a goal and just knowing that it's
some people find it easy.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
I didn't find it easy. I had to work really
hard for it.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
And it's just putting your head down, finding good people
to help you along the way. But just having that
I guess that hunger to do well. But the most
important thing is to enjoy what you're doing, because looking
back now, it was such a such a privileged time
of our life. You know, you're at that age where
(39:29):
you can do it will be anything you want. You're
not tied down to anybody, and so it's just finding
something that you love and.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
Having no regrets, like just giving it everything.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, we had this thing that we wanted to be
able to sit in the starting blocks before a race
and have.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
No wat ifs. And I think we kind of learned
a little bit of that from Roberdale just that year
we had with him.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
We learned that everything he did, both on and off
the water, was to make his boat go fast, and
so we learned that pretty quickly. And so our goal
was to be able to sit in the starting blocks
and you know, what if what ifs?
Speaker 4 (40:04):
We had? What if we hadn't done this or that?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
And I think it was just a really good way
for us to know that we prepared well for a race.
So just have goals, have process goals, and to tick
them off along the way.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
One of the most amazing things about doing this interview
is that there will be people who won't be able
to work out who's saying what. That's not worrying me.
But you're totally uncompetitive here. You split the questions up.
I don't know how you did that, but you have.
And you used to talk about when you were running
at home and running up to tell mommas was highly competitive.
(40:42):
Not anymore. I would suggest to you much more a partnership.
I'm going to suggest that perhaps that happened somewhere along
the line, and possibly when you're in the boat together.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Possibly Marie, Yeah, good observation here.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Maybe definitely don't feel the competitiveness nowadays. It's just been
lovely to be here, as Caroline see right at the beginning,
to have some family, you know, have the family nearby,
and for the children to grow up together, so there's
no there's no competitveness, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Fabulous. Well, look, I do hope you enjoy watching the
Olympics because you've you've given us one of the great memories,
and it wasn't so much the Athens win. The memory
that we'll stay with us is a Beijing one because
it was just, you know, right down to the wire
and we're all standing up screaming at the television and
you come by one one hundredth of a second. Way
(41:42):
to go, Lovely to chat, Enjoy the rest of your day.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Thank you, Mary Murray, Nice to see you.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
That was the former Olympic rowers George Gina and Carolyn
Eversswindel now Georgina Earl and Carolyn Meyer. Terrific interview. They're
lovely people. That was another episode of Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives,
brought to you by Callaway. If you enjoyed this episode,
(42:19):
please follow the podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you get
your podcasts. We'll be back first Thursday of next month
on Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives
Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway, the
leading manufacturer of premium golf clubs, balls and accessories worldwide.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi Murray Deeker here, Welcome to my podcast, Murray Deeker's
Sporting Lives. During my career, I've interviewed some of the
biggest names in sport. I'm thrilled to bring you this podcast,
talking to sporting legends and giving you a look into
their world. The Paris Olympics are underway, so we stick
(00:32):
with the Olympic theme in this episode, with not one
but two of our Olympic greats, Georgina and Carolyn Evers Swindel.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
While interviewing sports stars for over forty years, I had
a number of photos taken. Most of them are gathering
dust in our locker. Only three have made it to
my office wall. One of them has been entitled by
my less charitable friends as the Thorn between Two Roses.
(01:09):
It was taken up Baypark halftime in an NPC match
where I interviewed the Roses. Do you girls remember that?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Hi, Murray, Nice to chet vaguely, vaguely remember at Murray, Yes,
it was.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Known as a fundraiser type thing and rowing was hard
up at the time. Craig Ross was running rowing at
that time, and I remember coming down your profile was
absolutely huge, and it's two thousand and three. Do your
kids realize how big you were in terms of profile.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
It's hardly sort of hardly ever talk about it at home,
and it's funny. It's something that only really comes up
every four years. I think my youngest came home from
primary school use today and was mortified because the teacher
had made her stand up and tell her friends and
classmates what her mother had done, and she didn't want
a bar of it. So it's not really talked about.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
They don't. I don't think they understand, no.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And yours don't understand.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I don't know they.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
As Georgie said, it's kind of in every you know,
every four year kind of thing for them. I don't
think they're really interested. I think they're probably more interested
in themselves. I do remember my oldest must have started
school in twenty and sixteen and he he came home
one day and they obviously were talking about the Olympics
at school and he'd had no idea and he came home.
(02:39):
It wasn't the first thing he mentioned, because we'd driven
home and he was midway through afternoon tea and he
kind of looked at me and he said, Mommy, do
you know that you went to the Olympics And do
you know that Auntie Georgie and you week to the Olympics,
And do you know that you want to gold medal?
And I was like, you're starline, yes, and he was like, oh,
oh okay, and then he went off. And then the
next day he came home and he said that you
(03:00):
and Auntie Georgie had a photo with the.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Flag and so that was kind of cute.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And then I guess that, you know, he's back to
doing his lego and as Thomas the trained scene.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
But yeah, that's about. That's about. I think they know
a little bit more now, but more interested in themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
See, this is fascinating though to me, because I recall
vividly how high your profile was and now here you
are living in Cromwell, and that's interesting for two North
Islanders to end up in Cromwell, not the biggest place around.
So how did that happen for a starter or how
did you get there?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Just a husband's thought. I see him mind?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
How is from Clyde and it was always the plan
to move down to Central And look, I didn't know
anybody here at the time, but it's just such a
such a lovely place to live.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
It's it's it's an easy place to bring up kids.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
It's beautiful, We're spoilt with lakes and ski fields and everything.
It's just it's Yeah, I didn't know much about Cromwell,
but really really grateful that I love down here. Yeah,
and I was a saying Sam and I were in
christ Church, but a job opportunity came up and so
we probably should have moved further south for his job
(04:20):
at Caroline and carl here and I needed to have
some family around me, so we stayed in Cromwell too.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
And it's been pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
You know, all the kids have gone through the primary
school together and it's cool for the cousins.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
How hard was it to be a Superstar Because in
this little country, that's what you both were, Whether you
want that badge or not, that's what you were at Superstars.
How hard is it to be that one day and
the next day, changing nappies and looking after kids and
them screaming and yelling and getting the flu and everything
(04:55):
that kids do.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Oh, my children don't scream on not ice cream and yell.
Do you know what it was?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
It was easy, and it was I always probably before
I wanted to win a gold medal.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
I wanted to be a mum.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
You know, I had my dolls and played all those
games when I was little, and so it was I
was very happy to to to marry Karland and you know,
very grateful to have our children. And I think, I
think the thing about rowing is that it's all about you.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
You have to put yourself first the whole time.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And there's lots of different reasons why I decided to retire,
but one of them was that I wanted to put
other people in my life first. I wanted to support Karl.
I wanted to be more there for my family. You know,
my parents, they'd always been following us, and we'd always
had to, you know, put us, as I said, put
ourselves first.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And so I had.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I think it was just time and that I that
I wanted to look after and and not make myself
the priority. And so that's it definitely happened becoming a mother.
It's all about the kids, and I have loved being Tom,
Vicky and Jimima's mum rather than Caroline the rower, so
(06:12):
I much preferred that tag to be honest.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Georgie, yeah, very similar to Caroline.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I think rowing was really intense and obviously we loved
it and we had a great one in Beijing. But
I think we're both ready to, as Caroline said, just
to change the focus in our lives, and it is
incredibly selfish. I think as an athlete people talk about,
(06:39):
you know, making sacrifices, but I don't feel like we
made any sacrifices. I feel like we made choices to row,
and to it was an honor and a privilege to row,
and it was our family probably that made the sacrifices
so that.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
We could do that.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So I think we just both felt like it was
time and we were definitely ready to do something else.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
You both married former Olympic rowers. Did your commitment to
rowing men that you didn't meet any other males or
is it just that you think that rowing blokes are
the best around?
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I love you.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
So Sam didn't quite make it to the Olympics. Isn't
it as an athlete. He was a supporter, but he
wasn't in the team with us. I think when you're
in your twenties and you're living and rowing and everyone's
keeping the same schedule, I think it helps when there's
you know, boys and girls all doing that sort of
same sort of thing and they understand each other. I
think actually helps. I think the boys understand us and
(07:35):
get us and what we need. So I think that
was one of the main.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Reasons why we ended up with rowers as partners.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, how did you get started in rowing? Where were you?
And who started you?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
We were at school in Hook's Bay and we just
a friend suggested we start. Well, I saided first it
was just I knew nothing about rowing, but for me,
I mean we were both made keen on any kind
of sport at school, and so yeah, I remember walking
into the classroom one morning and my friend or our friend,
(08:12):
who had an uncle who coached in Gisbone, had suggested.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
That she go along to an open day at the
hooks By Rowing Club, and she asked me.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
I think I walked into the classroom obviously before Georgie
did that day, and she asked me and I said, yes, please,
sounds cool, And honestly, first row that April open day
at Hawks Bay and loved it.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
So yeah, couldn't get enough of it.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Were you at a Rudolph Steiner school?
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Yeah, we were at the Hastings of Stinas School.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, which was unusual. Was that wouldn't be a big school.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
No, probably it went through from we were at kindergarten
right through until seventh form and I think there were
probably about three hundred kids around that. But yeah, it
was it was a I mean, it was just school
for us. We didn't know any difference. We loved it
as a parent. Now I feel like it's a great
school philosophy, educational kind of philosophy, and I wish that there.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Was one down here for our kids.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
But yeah, it was just school for us, so we
didn't probably appreciate it as much as we should have.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Well, I heard about you both a long time ago.
We had a guy and I can't remember his first name,
but his second name was Thompson, and he was a
rowing reporter and he went along to regatter and of course,
you know, you'd have people come on your ZB scoreboard program,
and the interesting thing was that most of them were
(09:40):
volunteers and they would try and sell their own sport,
and he was into selling rowing. And I can recall
it vividly, saying these ever Swindell girls, Murray, you mark
my words, they are going to win Olympic golds. And
I thought you were a network mate who are coming
(10:00):
in from the sticks. But you must have had a
lot of early success, did.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
You, Caroline did at school?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, we were I went to
one Marty pub and it went well, and you know,
the selectors saw it, and then Georgie started and I
think I was selected just on my abilities of my
twin sister, and.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
She hated it.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And I remember we were training in the double skull
in the junior double in hoop Spay and we've been
selected to go to the Junior Worlds in Scotland that
year and it was a middle of winter. And if
I ever Caroline didn't want me to be there. Krolyen
wanted to be in a single skull. She didn't want
me sitting behind her. And if I ever once said
(10:51):
it's so cold, I don't want to go row, she
would turn around and say, don't need quit. And she
said that to me a few times, and so I
think I just learned to shut up. But that's how
we got. Caroline definitely had success at the Muddy Cup.
I didn't start rowing until my last year at school.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Yeah, I wasn't very nice. I wasn't very nice, But
it's all true.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
We're told that you learn more from your disappointments than
you do from your successes. So tell me what you
learned from missing out on qualifying for the Sydney Olympics
in two thousand.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Oh so much, Murray, so much. And you know, we
went there.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
We had we'd been in the women's eight in ninety
eight and ninety nine and we'd failed to qualify. And
then we're pretty lucky. We were taken out of the
eight and we were put into a double skull. Rob
had obviously qualified for Sydney and Richard was coaching him,
and the selectors put us in double skull and said, well,
(11:57):
they put us in a double skull because it would
go be a good training partner for Rob. It was
either a pair or double, and Richards the leets go
for a double because it's you know, you'll keep up
and push Rob along. So suddenly we found ourselves. You know,
with Richard and the coach boat and Rob beside us,
this legend, you know at the sky that we've been
looking up to all these years, and we were having
(12:20):
the best time. You know, everything was improving. We won
a world we went away. We won a World Cup regatta,
which is, you know, after coming last or second to
last and the woman's eight races for the previous two years,
to then go and win a World Cup. Our first
our first regatta was just a blow our socks off, really,
and then we had a bit more training and we
(12:42):
went off to and we thought we had everything that
we did. We thought we had everything sorted with Richard
and Rob, and we went off to the qualification regatta
and we had to come first or second, and we
came third. And I think I just remembered that. I
just remember thinking, you know, you can have the best
coach in the world and the best training partner in
(13:02):
the world, but you actually have to want it more
than anything else. And I probably hadn't learned that. There's
probably just an expectation there that I had everything I
needed and that's all I needed to do and work hard.
But actually in a race like a qualification regatta, which
is one of the worst kinds of regrettis there are
you have to really dig deep and you have to
(13:24):
really want it more than anybody else out there, and
I possibly didn't, and that's quite hard for me to
say that. But there's anything that I learned from that
experience of failing to get to Sydney, it was it
was that you can't just you can't just rely on
rely on.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
People around you. You have to want it.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
And then the hard thing was we weet to Sydney
and we watched people that we're beaten that you know
that summer in Europe do really well, and I remember
just kicking myself in the stands, thinking this isn't fun.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
So I learnt a lot.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
You mentioned Richard's name and we're talking Dick Tonks. I'd
like to pretend that I came down to interview you
both in how wrong at that time, but I didn't.
I came down because Dick Tnks wouldn't be interviewed by anybody.
And when Craig Ross rang me up, I said, and
he said, we've got the Eviswindell Twins and Rob Adell.
(14:22):
They'll be interviewed by you. And I said yeah, and
and he said, and that's all, And I said, no,
it's not. If you want me, mate, you get that
Dick tonks and he can speak into a microphone for
a change. And I did the interview with him, which
I remember quite vividly, the type of interview it was. Gee,
he was a feisty character, wasn't he?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Was?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
He What made him such a great coach?
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I think for Caroline and I he read us really well,
and he could read athletes. It's really hard to know
from a coach's perspective, what makes it from an athlete's perspective,
I think, well, first of all, it was like caw
I said, just privilege and we were so excited to
be selected in the double one, to get to have
him as a coach and Roll as a training partner.
(15:06):
But Richard, I think, over the years, taught us to
about training hard. He talked about us our goal each
week was to do more k's on the water than
our competition around the rest of the world.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And you don't he's ness, you know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
But I remember on Christmas Eve and at Carapiro would
do a one k test and then the a one
hour test, and then he'd send us home on Christmas
Eve and say, right, your competition might not be training tomorrow,
so you jump on the er and do another ergo
on Christmas Day. So he just taught us about wanting
to be the best and to train harder than anyone else.
(15:43):
And he also though, I think he could read us
well and he always just had us right on the edge,
and he pushed us harder than we could ever thought
we could be pushed, but he had us right there,
so but he didn't tip us over. If he tipped
us over, we would be able to come back in
the afternoon and do the afternoon session. But he just
had us right there, improving, but not pushing us too
(16:03):
hard that we couldn't carry on with the rest of
the week. I just think he could read us really well,
and he was You might have thought he was fisty
in his interview, but for Caroline and I he was
actually just really calm.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
And we would get.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
So wound up and nervous before racing, and he would
just be really despite how he was feeling inside, he
would come across as a really calming influence and it
just worked really well with Richard, and.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yeah, we were really lucky. Yeah, I think we just
had so much respect for him. We'd watched him, we'd
watched him with Rob while we were in the eight.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
And then we were so grateful and so respectful of
him that we wanted to do it for him just
as much as we wanted to do it for us.
So it was about making Richard happy. It was about
you know, he put so much time into us and
so much effect. He was always there, like, always waiting
for us, And yeah, it was about it was about,
(17:02):
you know, achieving for him and achieving goals for him,
achieving goals for us. And just because it worked for
us doesn't mean that his coaching or his style works
for others. But Richard, Richard worked for us, and we
could not have achieved what we did without him.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I feel like they talk about ex factors and crews
or teams, and I think he was our expector. I
think he took us from being a couple of New
Zealand rowers to winning a couple of Olympic gold medals.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
And I think he was the reason we were able
to achieve that.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Georgia and I there were some crews that wanted to
you know, they wanted to have involvement with their training program.
They wanted to know what they were doing. They wanted
to have him, but Georgia and I just wanted to
be told. I've always said on a sheep, I'm not
a leader, I'm happily follow and we had so much
trust in Richard that we just we just waited to
(17:57):
be told what to do, and you know, whatever he said,
we did because we knew that that's what we needed to.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Do to succeed.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's Sporting Lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
After the disappointments in Sydney, you cracked the World Championships
winning there, but then the big one two thousand and
four Athens, and I guess if you had to win
a gold at the Olympics, Athens is the place to
win it, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Lots of lovely history obviously in Greece, and it was
lovely timing for us to be able to go to
that games.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I think with Athens there was I think we were young.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
I think I'm really proud of the way because we
were young. I guess I'm proud of the way we
handled the pressure. There was a lot of pressure there's
a lot of expectation. And I think about this when
I when I talked to my children, people say, oh,
you're going to win. Yeah, it's easy, you've got it.
It's easy. You're going to you know, fly home. It's easy.
It's easy. It's easy, you know.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
And that didn't help. That just adds that just adds
pressure to what already is quite a high pressure situation.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
So I think I was really proud of the way
we handled that pressure. I only just handled it. It
was a long week. We qualified at the beginning of
the Regretta and then we had six days of no racing,
just little rows, little little bits of fast stuff, but
just little basic rows. And then we had the final
and it was a hard, hard week and I mentally, mentally,
(19:31):
mentally it was really.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Hard, really really hard week.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But somehow we handled it and we and we crossed
the finish line and we managed to you know, win,
and it was I'm really proud of the way we
handled that pressure. I'm not proud of the way I
didn't celebrate. I should have been more openly happy with
what we'd achieved, but I think I was just more relieved.
But I do I do regret not sticking my hand
(19:55):
up in the air and saying wahoo. But I'm just
really proud of way we handled the pressure.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, well, two thousand and eight. The final is a
race that no one who saw it will ever forget.
You know, we've seen fabulous races that people talk about,
the big horse races, and they talk about the Thriller
at Manila, and contests that come right down to the wire,
but it doesn't get any closer than one one hundredth
(20:24):
of a second. I want you to tell me about
that race where you came in that close in front
of Germany.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah, it's the race. The build up to the Games,
we'd had a shaker at the last World Cut Regatta
in Poland. I don't know if it was six weeks
before Beijing and we hadn't made the A final. We
won the B final. We were in tears. We cried
all the way back to New Zealand and we pretty
much turned around the airport and said to Richard, we
(20:56):
don't want to go to Beijing just to wear a
blazer with the first and on it.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
We don't want to go just to make up numbers
and a team.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
We only want to go if we're competitive, and after
that performance, we don't believe we are, and we were
ready to walk away, and he just turned around and
I think, you girls can can do it. And so
we spent six or eight weeks at home. We were
really lucky we had that training squad with Mahe and
the peer and some amazing.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Athletes to compare ourselves to.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
So we spent a lot of and we it wasn't
about working harder, It was about changing our mindset, I
think in those in those weeks, and I think that helped,
and we slowly got sort of more confidence and got
some boat speed again and went up to Beijing and
had an amazing heat race and again very similar to Athens.
(21:44):
Won the heat and had this long week of mind
games really and getting prepared for the final. But I
think we went into the final and all in our
previous rowing history, we'd sort of wanted to dominate right
from the first stroke and be in front from the
start to the finish, and we'd raced hard and that's
how we'd raced. But sort of times had change and
(22:04):
our competition had changed, and so a race plan for
Beijing was just to get out and get into a
really good rhythm and stay in our boats, stay in
our own bubble. And I don't know where we were,
but at five hundred meters we definitely weren't in front.
I think we're more like fifth, you know, we were
only in front.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
The only time we're in front, as Krolyne said, was
when we cross that finish line. So we had more
to prove to ourselves than anything else in that race.
We didn't care so much about results. We cared about
making sure that we race as hard as we could
and we and we were needed to prove to ourselves
that we were better than our performance in Poland. So
(22:43):
it was just a really internal thing. I wasn't aware
of any There was no pressure on us because we
performed so badly. I don't think anyone thought we would
lucky to make the final, to be honest, so there's
no pressure. Mum and dad week to watch, but probably
thought they were not going to mop up tears instead
of celebrate with us. But it was just about trying
to prove to ourselves. And then we got to that
(23:03):
last five hundred meters and we were in a medal
position and so we thought that was great. So we
just carried on giving it everything, and we were kind
of I think we were kind of in second and
we were like, oh, my goodness, we're going to get
a silver medal.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
This is amazing. And now the DBAT team came at
us and we're like, hang on, we want our silver medal.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, And when we crossed the line, and it might
have felt like a long time to wait, but we
were just who, We've got a medal, and after Poland,
we never thought we'd be in that position.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
So we were really happy with our race.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
We're really happy with how we'd raced it, and we
were happy with the outcome. Obviously a lot happier now
that it's a gold one and not a silver or bronze,
but at the time that's what we were thinking.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Extraordinary race was not you know, we didn't have a
clue what you're going to hear at home. It was
so close. People saw it in a different way. Did
you know you'd won when you went over the line?
Speaker 4 (24:03):
No, Well, the.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Germans looked really happy, didn't they. The Germans looked really happy,
and so we just assumed that they knew something that
we didn't. But no, I don't, I don't think I
think I was surprised. I think I had to dabble
check with the umpire who came over.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
We couldn't we couldn't see the score board from where
we were on.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
The lake, and he could hear the cheering but didn't
know that it was for New Zealand, and so it
wasn't until the umpire boat came over and see New
Zealand you've won, and we were are you sure.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Well? You're retired after those games? Was it important to
go out at the top?
Speaker 4 (24:37):
To be honest, I think we would have retired either way.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
It was lovely. It's lovely to obviously retire as Olympic champions.
I think though we both we were both really ready,
we hadn't talked about it. My many regret is that
if we had talked about it and had known, I
think I would have there's a paddle that you do
from the medal ceremony back to the boat park. I
think I would have taken the long way back from
that paddle and just sort of savor the moment a
(25:01):
little bit in the double with Caroline if I knew
that was our last time in a boat, But so
we hadn't talked about it. Before the Olympics, but I
think we both knew that we were ready to go
and do other things.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
What did you learn about yourself as a person from rowing?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I mean, obviously lots of things, Murray, lots of things.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
But suddenly, I guess, is just just achieving, just if
you want to achieve a goal. And I just you know,
it was relentless. Training was relentless. Every day is the
same thing, you know, knackering yourself, but worth it, like
worth it for that feeling that you get when you
cross the finish line. Work worth you know, every every
(25:43):
stroke of hard work or whatever it was, was worth
the feeling that you get when you achieve your goal,
when you when you win the race, when you have
a perfect row, it's all worth it. And I guess
that is a big thing for me, Like, you know,
it's worth all the hard work that you that you
put into something. You know, when things are looking but
(26:04):
hard and a bit miserable, it's you know that it's
it's for a good for a good reason. It's going
to feel good when you achieve your goal. And I
think that's one thing that I learned from it. Yeah,
I mean, I don't know what I learn about myself.
I just learned some valuable skills. So the team, the
team aspect of it. We were in the woman's eight,
(26:25):
as we said, early on in our careers, and Carolin
and I and a couple of others were really young.
We're still in the early twenties. There were some girls
in that boat that were a lot a lot older
than us, and you learn pretty quickly that in a team,
and it doesn't really matter what you do, that you
don't have to be friends. And necessarily they were doing
definitely doing different things to us in their time off
(26:47):
than what we were doing.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
But you just have to And it's like in the
double with Karen and.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
As a twin sister or was it just as a sister,
you know, probably seventy percent of that time we worn't
happy with each other. It was an intense environment where
in there's a little bit of carbon fire in a
middle rocky lake and we're trying to keep it balanced
and we want everything to be perfect.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
So you're not always mates.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
But I knew and you learn with your team you
don't have to be mates with all good friends or
do the same things and when you're not in the boat.
But I knew that every time Caroline put her blade
in the water, she was going to give it one
hundred percent and that she wanted the same goal as
I did. So as long as you respect and have
common goal and trust your teammates, and this can be
(27:32):
in anything in life, then that's that's the most important thing.
So I think we learned lots of valuable skills through
through rowing and our time and rowing that can be
used in other aspects of life, and that we can.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Try and pass on to also our children, to try
and get them to understand as well.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And like Caroline said, I if you want something bad enough,
I think they're slowly as they get older that the
children are slowly realizing and I can you know we
can if they want something bad enough, they just have
to put the time and the work it and that'll
help them try and achieve that.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Well. How much of an advantage was it to be
twins and a double skull.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Like I said, we both came into it with similar
mindsets and similar ideas about training, harm and what we wanted.
But you look at any sort of combinations that have
been together for amount of time, and they I mean
Hamish Bond and Eric Murray are a good example, you know,
they spent so much time together and were amazing and
(28:31):
had such incredible achievements. So I think combinations, it's just
time together. Maybe initially right at the beginning, being so
similar in our ideas and our approaches to training and racing,
that might have helped, But over time, I don't think
there's much more of an advantage.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
What we're on the topic of being a twin. What
are the good things about being a twin and what
are the bad things?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
It's hard, we're you know, it's four girls in our family.
It doesn't really feel any difference just being a sister.
Sometimes it was. It was pretty frustrating when we were
growing up. Apparently according to mum and dad, you know,
ever since day dot it was a competition, and I
think sometimes that's great, and I think, to be fair,
that must have played a big part in how competitive
(29:22):
we were, and that must have helped our rowing. But
it also got pretty exhausting and pretty frustrating at times, and.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Just as right for an example, with rowing.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
We had to go out of our way to spend
less time as possible together. So instead of taking a
car from the same flat down to the lake every day.
We took separate cars, so we had to go out
of our waiters to try and have some alone time.
But as Georgie said, like what was frustrating for us
could have been good. Could have been good for us
as athletes, you know, we would you know, everything was
(29:55):
a race. It was like you've got dropped off at
the gate and it was a run up the drive.
Because we were at this same class at school, had
the same friends, had the same news. So it was
hooker get to month first to tell her what happened
at school, and that used to drive us, not especially
for the person that came second. But at the same time,
I remember training in the gym there was a lot
of weights work for a few years there for rowing,
(30:17):
and you know, Georgia and I I don't know if
the other girls in the squad realized, but we were
just trying to outdo each other the whole time. Who
could lift heavy weights? Who could call a stronger?
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Erg was it was?
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And I guess if you've got an identical twin doing something,
then you can straight away say well if she can
do it.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
It's pretty much why I started rowing, you know, Caroline was.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I was stuck in the car watching her get on
the bus at Clyde and Hook, Spain, and when she
was at school and she was off to Carapio for
the weekend, and there was all these boys getting on
the bus as well, and all these lovely looking fun
girls and they were off to row. And then she
came home with medals and I was like, well, hang on,
if she can do that, then I can do it.
So its a lot as countless and a lot of
what helped us, also incredibly frustrating.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Well, we're coming up and enjoying the Olympics. I want
you to compare the environment and the occasions of a
World championship for rowing. Compare that to the Olympics.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Oh, the Olympics.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
It's an identical regatta, I think, Well it was for us,
wasn't it. Well, World Championships a lot more flags, more
guns around. But then rowing was normally we were out
of the village because we.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Were both Athens and Beijing.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
We had called satellite villagers and there was just a
few of us, a few countries at a hotel in Beijing,
so we were kind of kept separate. So for the
actual regatta part, and luckily Rohwan's the first week, so
then as soon as Rowan's finished, we get to go
(31:50):
into the village and then it's just this completely different experience,
isn't it. I mean, like, obviously we don't have that
at a World Championships, the whole village.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Yeah, I think as right as as Kal.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Visually, you walk into a World champ and anyone can
walk into the boat park, or that we could back then.
Now when we went to Athens, I remember walking into
the boat park and there's a line and men with
guns and so straight up with visually you've got these
huge differences. Suddenly it's this big deal. I think as
a roller we have a world chance every year, but
(32:22):
the Olympics is the pinnacle of our career and that's
what we're striving for. That's what we're training for every day,
and we do these cycles every year and.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
That the goal is to perform well at it at
Olympic Games.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's sporting lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
The Olympics, Now what do they mean to you?
Speaker 4 (32:52):
We're looking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
So my son was up this morning at seven thirty
to watch the sevens boys play against South Africa.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
I think it was so it's going to be hard
to tear ourselves away and get the kids to school.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
But they I think for me, it's I love the Olympics,
and it doesn't mean you get to watch these sports
that we never normally get to watch, and you're watching
the best in the world do their things. So it's
amazing what we get to watch over the next you know,
a couple of weeks, and it's funny you do things
(33:27):
like this, Mari. People were suddenly interested in what we did.
It seems like in a different lifetime ago and some
old memories come up and it's lovely to have this
opportunity to talk about our Olympic experience.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
But for me now it's.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
It's just getting to watch like we do when we
were little, watching some coo athletes do some cool stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
One of my favorite comments about the Olympics is Vale Adams,
and you will recall that she was beaten by a
drug cheat and she passed the comment I may have
a slightly role, which she said to drop her forgotten
that the truth of the whole thing basically is that
you know, there are elements of the Olympics which have
(34:12):
hurt and the drug cheating thing must be on the
back of people's minds from time to time. Did you
ever think about it?
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I tried not to.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
It makes me sad if I think about it too much,
but I tried not to. I think the way I
look at it, Murray, is if I'm knick and neck
with another roller in the middle of a race and
I'm feeling, you know, I'm feeling absolutely naked, and I
know that there's still one thousand meters to go, and
there's a chance that I might be racing someone who's
(34:46):
been taking drugs, then straight away they've got an advantage
over me, and mentally, that's really hard thing to think about.
So I try to think, No, everyone in the race
is clean, and therefore we're equal, and there's they've got
no advantage because we've all been able to train every day,
and we've all got you know, similar boats and similar
(35:07):
similar ores, and so I don't I've never I think
we were lucky, but I'm probably a little bit naive.
As I said, I just tried not to even bring
that into the into my into my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
There was a medal that was awarded to you in
twenty sixteen, some considerable time after he had retired, called
the Thomas Keller Medal. What was it? No other New
Zealand has got it? I don't think.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I think I think had it since since. Yeah, yeah,
since it's really good question, Mary. It is just recognition
for our rowing career and International Rowing Federation. Yeah, you know,
to be recognized in New Zealand for what we did
was it was amazing. But I guess for the international
(36:00):
growing body to recognize as well, I think they give
it to you to retired athletes. I think you have
to be retired from the sport, so to be recognized
internationally was really lovely.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Do you still have an involvement in rowing? No, you're
out of it.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I'm highly sympathetic to swimming and rowing parents because of
all those early hours in the morning. Swimming parents have
to run them their kids to the pool, and rowing
parents do the same. Tell me about your mum and dad.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Well, mom and dad were just mum and dad, right,
And it's not till you become a parent yourself that
you realize how lucky you are.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
They were awesome.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
They there's for girls and mum try to hard us
to get us all to ride Pony's horses, and she
managed to persuade two sisters, but Caroly and I didn't
want a bar of it. So, as I said, looking
back now as a parent, I can see that they
never once, apart from pushing the riding thing, they never
(37:00):
once pushed us to do anything else. But whenever we
said we want to try basketball, we want to join
the cycling, we want to do.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Tennis, they supported us one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
And they were our taxi drivers, so never pushed us
in any way, but supported us fully and continued to
support us even once we had left home and we
were training Cambridge and we'd been slept in the Woman's eight,
but couldn't fund ourselves, couldn't pay for our rent, couldn't
pay for our picture, so mum and dad continued to
(37:33):
support us. And of course it's not until you get
it sort of a world ranking and rowing that you
get any funding. So I think all of us in
the Women's eight had t shirts made up said proudly
supported by our mum and dads, because we seriously wouldn't
have been there if it hadn't been for them. So
they they were number one supporters, and it was lovely.
Once we know did make the double one, continue to
(37:56):
sort of compete overseas, Mum and dad got to come
and watch us. So yeah, they they were awesome. They
are awesome.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
If you had a message, both of you, for young
New Zealand women who are battling hard to get to
the top of whatever sport that they're drying, what would
that message be.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
It would just be make sure you're enjoy what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
I think, as Georgie said at the very beginning of
this interview, for rowing, for Georgie and I, it was
a privilege. We were doing something we loved. We never
felt like we were sacrificing anything. So you've got to
have that, like you've got it's got to be something
we would And then you know, when we started doing well,
we were getting, you know, paid for what we did,
(38:44):
and it was like, my goodness, we're doing We're suddenly
getting paid to row. This is like a dream job.
This is this is amazing. So you've got to have
you've got to be passionate about what you do. And
but it's just a guess, like I said before, it's
just setting yourself a goal and just knowing that it's
some people find it easy.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
I didn't find it easy. I had to work really
hard for it.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
And it's just putting your head down, finding good people
to help you along the way. But just having that
I guess that hunger to do well. But the most
important thing is to enjoy what you're doing, because looking
back now, it was such a such a privileged time
of our life. You know, you're at that age where
(39:29):
you can do it will be anything you want. You're
not tied down to anybody, and so it's just finding
something that you love and.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
Having no regrets, like just giving it everything.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, we had this thing that we wanted to be
able to sit in the starting blocks before a race
and have.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
No wat ifs. And I think we kind of learned
a little bit of that from Roberdale just that year
we had with him.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
We learned that everything he did, both on and off
the water, was to make his boat go fast, and
so we learned that pretty quickly. And so our goal
was to be able to sit in the starting blocks
and you know, what if what ifs?
Speaker 4 (40:04):
We had? What if we hadn't done this or that?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
And I think it was just a really good way
for us to know that we prepared well for a race.
So just have goals, have process goals, and to tick
them off along the way.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
One of the most amazing things about doing this interview
is that there will be people who won't be able
to work out who's saying what. That's not worrying me.
But you're totally uncompetitive here. You split the questions up.
I don't know how you did that, but you have.
And you used to talk about when you were running
at home and running up to tell mommas was highly competitive.
(40:42):
Not anymore. I would suggest to you much more a partnership.
I'm going to suggest that perhaps that happened somewhere along
the line, and possibly when you're in the boat together.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Possibly Marie, Yeah, good observation here.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Maybe definitely don't feel the competitiveness nowadays. It's just been
lovely to be here, as Caroline see right at the beginning,
to have some family, you know, have the family nearby,
and for the children to grow up together, so there's
no there's no competitveness, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Fabulous. Well, look, I do hope you enjoy watching the
Olympics because you've you've given us one of the great memories,
and it wasn't so much the Athens win. The memory
that we'll stay with us is a Beijing one because
it was just, you know, right down to the wire
and we're all standing up screaming at the television and
you come by one one hundredth of a second. Way
(41:42):
to go, Lovely to chat, Enjoy the rest of your day.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Thank you, Mary Murray, Nice to see you.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
That was the former Olympic rowers George Gina and Carolyn
Eversswindel now Georgina Earl and Carolyn Meyer. Terrific interview. They're
lovely people. That was another episode of Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives,
brought to you by Callaway. If you enjoyed this episode,
(42:19):
please follow the podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you get
your podcasts. We'll be back first Thursday of next month
on Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives
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