A night to remember
Last week, the men’s rowing eight from the 1972 Olympics gathered in Wellington for a celebratory dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of their famous gold medal victory. Stuff’s Mike White was invited to join them.
‘‘I was married for a week, and then buggered off to Christchurch for training, and was gone for five months.’’
Lindsay Wilson
‘‘With Rusty, it was, ‘There’s no talking here mate, just get on with it. I’m the boss, you do what you’re told’.’’
Tony Hurt recalls the coaching methods of Rusty Robertson
Something had gone seriously wrong with the drinks orders.
Several beers were lost, a chardonnay had gone AWOL, and tall men threw short glances at progress behind the bar.
Seeing nothing hopeful, they shrugged, and carried on chatting.
Upstairs at a Wellington hotel, these were the crew of New Zealand’s 1972 Olympic men’s rowing eight, gathering with their wives, other rowers, and officials, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their gold medal-winning race – a sporting moment that has become the stuff of legend.
On September 2, 1972, in Munich, the Kiwi crew blasted out of the start and blew away a fancied field to win the race and a special place in New Zealanders’ hearts.
Moments later, chests still heaving as they recovered, gold medals draped over their black singlets, their emotions overflowed as God Defend New Zealand, rather than God Save the Queen, was unexpectedly played while our flag was raised.
Gary Robertson tipped his head back in utter elation; Trevor Coker blew deeply trying to keep himself composed; Athol Earl beamed exultantly and closed his eyes as if scarcely able to believe what was happening; John Hunter blinked hard behind thick glasses, lips pressed tightly together as his chin quivered.
Now here most of them were, reunited, 50 years on, still big and powerful men, still shoulder to shoulder, still smiling.
The crew’s race strategy was beguilingly simple.
Go out hard, go like hell for 500m, and hang on.
They knew if they got in front their biggest threats, the East Germans, the West Germans, the Russians and the Americans, would struggle to reel them in.
And that’s exactly what happened.
‘‘We had a great start,’’ remembers stroke Tony Hurt, ‘‘and when we started to push out, I thought, ‘things are looking good here’.
‘‘And when we got to the 1000m [halfway] and we almost had clear water, I thought, ‘yeah, we’ll be all right’.’’
In the middle of the boat, Lindsay Wilson could see the other crews coming back at them in the final 500m.
‘‘We were fading fast, oh shit yeah.’’
But as they crossed the finish nearly a boat length ahead, Wilson could still summon enough strength to raise his arms to the sky, as his crewmates slumped over their oars, completely spent.
What made the win more remarkable was the now established fact that other crews, particularly the East Germans, were using steroids to enhance their performance – and somehow evading the drug testing.
John Hunter remembers he got hauled away after the crew’s heat for testing, but was too dehydrated to produce a urine sample.
‘‘So they gave me a six-pack of beer, and I worked my way through that.’’
After the race, the crews socialised, which included the New Zealanders introducing the East Germans to boat racing of a different kind, over drinking games – the Kiwis again triumphing, once more thanks to cunning tactics.
But three days after their victory, the Games were turned on their head when Palestinian militants took Israeli athletes hostage, eventually killing 11 of them.
‘‘We were in full celebration mode,’’ says Hunter, ‘‘and I remember coming back to our
quarters in the Olympic village early one morning and there were police everywhere with guns’’.
The rowers left the village for their training camp an hour away.
It was at the training camp that the spectre of politics and war again raised its head, at what was meant to be a Games that healed Germany’s image with the world.
At an official function for the rowing team, Dick Joyce noticed one local spent the evening scowling in the corner, so approached him and asked what the matter was.
‘‘New Zealand soldiers killed my son,’’ the man blurted.
‘‘So I said, ‘Listen,’ remembers Joyce, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
‘And if it makes you feel any better, my father-in-law spent four years in your prisoner of war camps, and he hasn’t got a lot of nice things to say about you guys. So that’s the way it is and we just have to get on with it’.’’
An hour later, the German father walked over to Joyce, put a stein of beer in front of him, and quietly walked away.
Death had cast a shadow over the crew even before racing started.
Bank worker Athol Earl was 19 when the crew arrived in Germany.
His parents had travelled to Europe to watch their son at the Olympics, despite his father, Peter, having been warned his heart might not cope with the trip.
As they crossed the Swiss Alps from Italy on a bus tour, Peter suffered a heart attack and died – just five days before the eight’s first race. He was 49.
The news reached the New Zealand team’s manager, Fred Strachan, first.
‘‘And I got woken up,’’ recalls Earl, ‘‘and my sister was on the phone to say Dad had died.
‘‘And they gave me a whisky straight away, because they knew what had happened.’’
Earl remembers going for a walk, then going back to sleep, the whole Olympic environment making things surreal.
‘‘So it was easy to forget the reality of what had happened, actually – to a degree.’’
Earl turned 20 the day before the gold-medal race, and marked the day with a single beer.
‘‘We weren’t there to celebrate birthdays.’’
The next day, his mother watched Earl win gold.
The crew’s Wellington reunion was held on Earl’s 70th birthday, which lent everyone extra reason to celebrate.
During dinner, Earl tapped his glass and handed over to Hunter to speak.
‘‘I’d like to propose a toast,’’ said
Hunter, beer in hand, ‘‘to those who are not here – and I’m referring to those who have passed on.
‘‘To absent crew members.’’ Front of mind were Trevor Coker, who had died of a brain tumour in 1981, aged just 31.
And also cox Simon Dickie, who was killed after falling from a balcony at his Taupō home in 2017.
But they also remembered coach Rusty Robertson, the sometimesflawed genius who guided the 1968 coxed four (which Dickie and Joyce were members of) and the 1972 eight to Olympic gold medals.
‘‘He was a builder from Oamaru,’’ recalls Earl, ‘‘so he was simple. But he knew who needed arse-kicking and who needed patting’’.
Tony Hurt says Robertson understood what was needed to get the best from a crew and make a
boat go fast. ‘‘But he was also a hard man, in terms of discipline – which is good for a coach. You can’t put up with shit.
‘‘These days, guys won’t do anything unless we talk about it.
‘‘Well, with Rusty, it was, ‘There’s no talking here mate, just get on with it. I’m the boss, you do what you’re told’.
‘‘These days, everyone needs a kiss and a cuddle.’’
Despite the personal pressure and national expectations the eight carried into the Olympics, Hurt says the crew remained extremely tight, with egos buried.
‘‘To my memory, there was never a harsh word spoken between any of the guys to each other.’’
Hurt, 76, and still working on the tools as a plumber in Auckland, says what happened that day in 1972 remains one of the highlights of his life.
When he watches replays of the race, the hairs on his neck still stand up.
And when he looks at his gold medal, he’s filled with memories of good people and good times.
‘‘I never realised I had the potential to be part of it. I just thought, I’m lucky to be here.’’
Hurt says being a gold medal winner provided him with many benefits in later years
Similarly, Lindsay Wilson says the race changed his life. He still gives talks about it, and his winner’s medal needs regilding because so many people have touched and held it.
But what was often forgotten was that the road to Munich had been full of sacrifices.
During training, the crew got one day off a week – Friday – but that was often spent selling raffle tickets or doing coin trails to raise money to get to Munich, their wives alongside them.
Like most of the crew, Wilson’s training was fitted around work, and he had a mortgage to pay, a young family to support.
‘‘I was married for a week, and then buggered off to Christchurch for training, and was gone for five months.’’
So when they returned from the Olympics, heroes in their own land, there was no time for posturing.
‘‘I went to work on Monday morning,’’ remembers Wilson.
Sue Phillips, Trevor Coker’s widow, who also attended the reunion, says her teacher’s salary supported the justmarried couple while Coker trained.
Phillips was travelling by ferry from Wellington to Lyttelton when the Olympic final took place on the other side of the world.
So she went to the purser’s office, explained her situation, and asked if there was any way she could listen to the race.
She was ushered into an officers’ mess where a radio relayed the race, surrounded by bearded seamen who politely congratulated her afterwards, while she struggled to keep her emotions in check.
As soon as she left the room, Phillips sprinted down the passageway whooping.
Hunter’s wife, Liz, watched the race on a tiny black and white TV in the sunroom of her parents’ home in Scotland.
Liz had married Hunter just before he left for the Olympics and the pair would write to each other every day they were apart.
She still has all their letters.
As she watched the final, Liz was flanked by her father clutching a bottle of whisky to celebrate with, and her mother with a bucket of water to calm Liz down.
When the crew won, ‘‘I didn’t know whether to pick up the whisky or the water first.
‘‘I just threw myself onto the couch in sort of hysteria, really. It would have made a damn good film.’’
As dessert plates were scraped, and coffees arrived, seats were swapped as people moved around the table to catch up with everyone.
Longtime rowing administrator Bill Falconer told the crew he was in Washington when the race happened, and raced to get a newspaper to find out the result. However, all it mentioned was that the United States had beaten East Germany. Falconer had to phone home to ask where New Zealand had finished.
‘‘I don’t know whether you recognise the centrality of the position and the role you have within the rest of the New Zealand rowing community,’’ Falconer told the crew.
‘‘You are legends, and thank God our legends are here with us.’’
As the crew and colleagues drifted downstairs for nightcaps and goodbyes, Dick Joyce sat smiling, a beer in front of him.
The Wellington engineer had organised the event, knowing how important the events of 50 years ago and their enduring friendships were.
‘‘When you’re racing, you’re pushing your body to the extreme.
‘‘And if you doubt that anybody in the boat is going to to do the same, then you’re not going to do it.
‘‘So part of the teamwork of the crew is confidence that everybody is going to give it their all. Hence, you become a very close-knit team – and that close-knit team obviously stays over the years.
‘‘So it’s a great feeling to come to something like this and sit down with your old mates and tell a few stories, and tell a few lies.
‘‘We were not prepared to let ourselves down, wewere not prepared to let all the people who helped us get there down.
‘‘We had to deliver – and we delivered.’’