Kiwi rowers take lessons to Japan - and come back with their own

It was a classic underdog tale. 

A Japanese eights rowing team, Toyota Boshoku, consistently third place in a national competition. Two Kiwi athletes – gold medalist rowers Shaun Kirkham and Tom Mackintosh – brought onboard as both coaches and rowers to turn it around.  

And – at the pinnacle race of the season in May this year- pulling ahead by a couple of seconds for the win.  

New Zealand rower Shaun Kirkham captures a selfie with the Toyota Boshoku team and fellow Kiwi rower Tom Mackintosh. Image: Supplied

It was a moment of success for the two, echoing their success for New Zealand, winning gold in the men’s eights at the Tokyo Olympics two years previously.  

But to understand how two Kiwi athletes helped a Japanese team to victory, let’s rewind a little. 

Kirkham and Mackintosh had been contracted as both 'player-coaches' - possibly a first for Kiwi rowers in Japan – to help the team improve their rowing. They’d row as part of the eights but also spend time sharing how New Zealand rowers train and compete.  

It was part of a wider idea to help “turn the tide of Japanese rowing” Kirkham says. That idea had its beginnings in Hiroshi Sugito. 

Kirkham with Hiroshi Sugtio. Image: Supplied

“He’s been trying to help Japanese rowing for a long time, in terms of widening their perspective of how to go fast in a boat,” Kirkham says. 

Hiroshi has strong connections across both Japanese and New Zealand rowing – he coaches at a high level in Japan and has helped with New Zealand teams in their Olympics preparations. He also connects with New Zealand rowing on a club level and has worked with the Otago Rowing Club in the past. It was Hiroshi who saw an opportunity for New Zealand’s world-class rowing skills to help Japanese athletes. 

However, he’d been met with resistance from Japanese rowing bodies. As Mackintosh puts it, “Japanese rowing is very set in its ways.” 

So, Hiroshi got creative: he suggested two New Zealand rowers join a struggling corporate team and “put on a showcase.” 

That’s how the Toyota Boshoku eights rowing team ended up with two Kiwi athletes in the boat.  

The Toyota Boshoku team. Kirkham and Mackintosh spent time on and off the water getting to know the team. Image: Supplied

A corporate team may sound unusual to a country like New Zealand, with its regional club structures. But corporate leagues work in much the same way: athletes form teams under their company’s banner and compete in national competitions, cheered on by their supporters. These teams attract high-performance talent, some of whom go on to represent Japan. 

When Kirkham and Mackintosh arrived, Toyota Boshoku’s eights crew was “pretty consistently” landing in third place in the national corporate league competition, the All Japan Championships. 

First place was dominated by a team from telecom company NTT. NTT had won the championship for the last seven years – convincingly too and Toyota Boshoku would have to make up about 15 seconds to beat them.  

Mackintosh (left) and Kirkham hold the trophy from the All Japan Championships. Image: Supplied

Once on the ground, Kirkham and Mackintosh started picking up on changes big and small that the team could make: everything from basic boat set-up conditions, adjusting oar movement and recovery, to optimising the physiological benefits of training. 

They worked for weeks on training. It paid off, with Toyota Boshoku pulling ahead by three quarters of a length at the finish line.   

And while Kirkham and Mackintosh were rowing as part of the team, they’re both quick to say it wasn’t them being in the boat that earned the win.  

“Tom and I, we do make a difference by just physical ability,” Kirkham says, “But we can’t make a boat go from 15 seconds behind to two seconds in front by ourselves. That’s just impossible no matter how good you are.” 

“The big difference comes from all the other six guys in the boat who made these big changes.” 

Both were blown away by the Japanese rowers’ ability to take on advice and learn new techniques, something they know is incredibly hard.  

“If we gave [the team] advice, they’re thinking about it the rest of the day,” Kirkham says, “They go home, they review the video, they apply what you said to the video and then they come back and they’ve cemented a change that for a New Zealand athlete, for myself, takes months and months of work and concentration.” 

While the two Kiwi athletes were in Japan to pass on what they knew, they both found themselves learning a lot in return. Image: Supplied

And as the Japanese rowers took on Kiwi lessons, the New Zealanders found themselves learning a lot. 

“Tom and I were absorbing all these things about Japanese culture, the way that they were operating,” Kirkham says. 

“There was a lot we could learn about their attention to detail, their pride that they had and their willingness to trust somebody.” 

He said their pride in particular was something he wanted to bring to New Zealand rowing – the pride the team had in everything from small things like looking after their equipment, to large things like competing on a national stage.  

Kirkham summed up his time as a “life changing opportunity”. 

“It truly is. If an opportunity comes up where you’re immersed in a different culture and you’re striving towards a goal with a different team, different perspectives, a different way of life, that’s automatically life changing.” 

Now the pair are back in New Zealand, they’ve been watching the Toyota Boshoku team succeed from afar. 

They’re hoping to make their way back one day but, in the meantime, as Kirkham puts it “I love the idea of creating competition for New Zealand rowing." 

- Asia Media Centre