Adams at helm of Rowing Ireland
Rowing in Ireland is going through a successful period and the man barking the orders is a Kiwi.
That man is Manawatu’s Hamish Adams, who has been the chief executive of Rowing Ireland for the past four years, and with him in charge, participation numbers are up and results for the sports body have been improving.
Ireland won their first Olympic medal at the Rio Games last year when Paul and Gary O’donovan won a silver medal in the men’s lightweight double sculls.
That was a massive result for Adams, who has been involved with rugby for most of his life and rowing had been relatively new to him until four years ago.
But he said the thing that attracted him to the job was that it was a chief executive position and the rowing centre was local. It’s based in Cork, which he said was like Lake Karapiro, New Zealand’s base for high performance rowing.
Out of Palmerston North Boys’ High School, Adams worked as the development officer for the Manawatu Rugby Union before he moved to Ireland as a player-coach with the Dolphin club.
The 47-year-old worked for the Munster academy, before getting the job as boss of the Ireland Rugby Union Players’ Association for five years, until he landed the rowing job four years ago.
‘‘It’s like going from Westpac back to ANZ,’’ Adams said. ‘‘The business of sport is trying to achieve a lot of the same things, just with different resources.’’
He said he would never have guessed he would end up working where he is now, but that’s how sport works.
Rowing Ireland had one high performance coach and one high performance director. Now they are looking to employ a third coach.
Adams said the success had been built on good governance and it was nice to put things right under his watch.
Adams was realistic in that ‘‘sport is a business’’ and because the Irish government announce their funding every year, Adams has to be conservative with his planning.
‘‘It’s very tough. We’re working on a small budget and we’ve got to do a lot with little.
‘‘The cost of that Olympic medal is probably one of the cheapest in the whole world in terms of what we had put into it.’’
The O’donovans’ medal was Ireland’s first Olympic medal, but they have had six world champions over the years.
There are now 14 fulltime staff and that has grown from four in his time.
Rowing is the only sport not centralised in Dublin and is at Inniscarra Lake in the south of Ireland.
For what is a small sport in Ireland, five athletes went to the last Olympics – a lightweight men’s double, a lightweight women’s double, who were sixth and a singles sculls, who was 13th.
He admitted rowing was very much down the pecking order and even rugby is a distant fourth behind the gaelic sports and football, he said.
At the moment they are starting an Olympic cycle again.
He said there are about 3000 competitive rowers in Ireland and 10,000 in total, but the secondary school competition is not as strong as in New Zealand.
Adams has an Irish wife and three daughters, and the eldest, who is 13, has just started rowing.