Tokyo bound…
KURT BAKER’S QUEST FOR GOLD
Kurt Baker talks to Rikki Swannell about his second chance at Olympic gold.
Kurt Baker reckons what you see is what you get. Straight up and honest with a ready smile, he has a public persona very much in keeping with who he is; a friendly, kiwi bloke and popular team-mate.
His jovial nature is no act. But he’s also a smart, ultra-professional who knows when to switch off the laughs and when to perform. He’s a new dad who loves to cook and is cultivating quite the vege garden, who also used the Covid lockdown to sit his real estate papers. He’s a guy who knows how good he has it as a contracted New Zealand Sevens player, albeit one who doesn’t quite get around the globe so much anymore. You won’t hear him complain that they don’t get the kudos or profile of other national teams; Baker and his All Blacks Sevens team-mates are grateful to have jobs at all given what Covid has done to a sport that thrives on big crowds and international venues.
But he’s also a player who had the courage of his convictions to speak up when he felt things weren’t right within the team and take on a legend of the game. It may have been what ultimately cost him a place in the squad for the Rio Games, but was also something that eventually led him home and to the cusp of finally fulfilling that Olympic goal.
Baker’s omission from the team to play in Rio surprised many seasoned observers. Having played almost every minute of every game leading up to the tournament, Baker himself was blindsided and maintains his dumping was because he had challenged the methods of coach Sir Gordon Tietjens.
“The biggest disappointment for me was the way our team operated at the time. We had our culture wrong, in fact it was probably nonexistent; as players we were fine but there was no cohesion as a whole group,” he recalls. “For me personally, I was disappointed I didn’t make it, but at the same time parts of me, when I look back now, I’m bloody glad I stood up for what I believed in, because it’s meant our programme has gone forward and progressed, because at the time we were going backwards.”
DROPPED FOR BEING TOO OUTSPOKEN AHEAD OF THE RIO OLYMPICS, SEVENS MAVERICK KURT BAKER TALKED TO RIKKI SWANNELL ABOUT REDEMPTION AND HIS DREAMS OF WINNING OLYMPIC GOLD.
WE HAD OUR CULTURE WRONG, IN FACT IT WAS PROBABLY NON-EXISTENT.’
Following his omission, Baker was done with both sevens and New Zealand Rugby and headed to Italy to play in the Pro-14. Problem was his Zebre club didn’t fulfill its end of the bargain and stopped paying the players after about eight months. While the eight month “O.E” was like living the dream, Baker needed a job.
“When I was in Italy, I went to the Paris Sevens and presented the guys their jerseys. It was a big eye-opener and even then, I thought you just understand when your heart is with a team or a group of people”.
Clark Laidlaw, whom Baker had had a long association with at Taranaki, had taken over as All Blacks Sevens coach and the stars aligned for a return to New Zealand.
“I needed somewhere to go, the opportunity was there with Sevens and I’d got to a point where I’d realized what I wanted to do, so it was almost like the answer was there for me. It was the right timing, the right coach, who I had a connection with, and he didn’t have to do too many background checks because he’d already seen the best and the worst of me,” Baker laughs.
Under Laidlaw, and the leadership of senior players like Baker, Tim Mikkelson, Scott Curry and Sione Molia, the team has gone from strength to strength since the disappointing fifth in Rio. Baker says he still has huge respect for everything Sir Gordon has done for the game, but perhaps looking back now, much of the team’s identity was wrapped up in the legendary, almost mythical status the coach had at the time.
“We’ve done a lot of work as a current group to make sure we’re not like we were in 2016,” he says. “Culture can be an overused word sometimes, but our team didn’t really have an identity… now we know what we stand for, what we want, and how we can influence the next generation coming through.”
While having his say got him in trouble a few years back, Baker’s forthright views are now more accepted.
“We’re encouraged to challenge each other and the coaching group, and we know that we’re not going to get better if we don’t. On a day-to-day basis that’s a big part of how a team operates …you might get some golden nuggets out of challenging someone.”
It makes for a robust environment that has driven the All Blacks Sevens’ back to the upper echelon of the game winning the World Cup and Commonwealth Games in 2018, the truncated 2020 World Series and makes them one of the favourites going into the Tokyo Olympics. Baker concedes the Covid shutdown of
Sevens over the past year means form is hard to gauge going to Japan.
“It’s really hard to judge because we haven’t played anyone for more than a year, but we back ourselves and have been preparing for a long time for this. We’ve got a pretty awesome bunch of lads and I would love people to see how we train and the way the guys apply themselves considering we haven’t been able to compete… we’re a group of caged lions.”
Having had his Olympic hopes whipped out from under him five years ago Baker doesn’t want to bring bad karma to himself or the team by pre-planning any post-Tokyo celebrations like the one which cemented his cult hero status after the World Cup win in 2018. Yea, you know the one.
“It’s quite funny, once a month I’ll get a random message from some div three cricket team that’s done it or the odd Irish team that sends one through; it’s a heck of a legacy.”
…And a “bloody good laugh.”
“It sums me up as a player; when it’s business time I’m reasonably fierce but it’s important to have a bit of a laugh as well. There’s no mask – what you see is what you get.”
Maybe. But maybe that image of the fun-loving naked guy on someone’s shoulders hides the fact that there is a lot more to Kurt Baker than meets the eye.
THERE’S NO MASK – WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET.’