No turning back for Olympic champion

After Sir Steve Redgrave won his fourth consecutive gold medal at the Olympics he famously said: ‘‘Anybody who sees me in a boat has my permission to shoot me.’’ Four years later he won a fifth at the Sydney Olympics.

Hamish Bond retired yesterday with three Olympics golds around his neck and while he feels the same sentiments as Redgrave did in Atlanta in 1996, there’s definitely no way he’s going to change his mind.

‘‘I was talking to Rob Waddell, our chef de mission for the last couple of Olympics, to let him know that I was retiring today,’’ Bond told Stuff at his farewell event at the NZOC offices in Auckland yesterday.

‘‘He made mention that it’s only three years until Paris. I don’t know exactly what my words were, but they were to the same effect.

‘‘If you do see me near a boat, you don’t have to shoot me, but you need to take me in for a serious intervention.’’

With it being a shorter than usual gap between the Tokyo and Paris Olympics, it did give Bond more to mull over about retirement than otherwise would have been the case. Even though he turns 36 next month, he believes his body would have been up for it. But perhaps his mind wasn’t.

‘‘You always have that lunatic factor in your head where you say could I do it?’’ Bond said.

‘‘I’d like to think that physically

I’ll still be OK in a couple of years’ time. But the reality is that mentally, the last couple of years I did have to push myself hard and that was only going to get harder with more time commitments outside of the sport.’’

Rowing is one of those sports where training is relentless and you only aim to peak a few times a year. Swimming and track cycling are similar and to keep going for so long, training for day after day, year after year, requires great mental strength.

To officially retire five months after the Olympics does seem unusual. Redgrave made his ‘shoot me’ comment when he was still in the boat in Atlanta.

While Bond mulled over his future he kept training, knowing that if he stopped for a long period, there was definitely no way back.

‘‘One of the hardest things about the transition from being an athlete is that I’ve taken great pride in knowing that in my given pursuit, I’m one of, if not the best, in the world,’’ he said. ‘‘To let that melt away is going to be a change. To know that I can’t just turn up and put in a world beating performance.

‘‘I guess I’m trying to slowly move on to what I’m doing. On a day to day level, I’ve got three young children, so I’ve found that any free time I have is easily soaked up by them.’’

Bond retires with three Olympic gold medals, and eight from world championships. He also has a bronze medal picked up in the cycling time trial from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in 2018, captured during a brief time when he swapped pedals for oars.

‘‘It was special,’’ he said of his cycling medal. ‘‘I guess I traded off my reputation as a rower to a certain extent and was afforded opportunities with that.

‘‘To get to where I did in cycling in a short space of time, I never intended that when first starting with it after Rio.

‘‘I didn’t reach the absolute ceiling, but I got a fair idea of where it was.’’

With rowing, he certainly reached his ceiling. Which was the top of the world.