30 June 2018

FISA, Worldrowing, announced yesterday who will receive the organisation’s finest award for the year 2018. In a press release it was declared that the Thomas Keller Medal goes to the Kiwis Eric Murray and Hamish Bond.

The 2018 Thomas Keller Medal, rowing’s most prestigious award, has been awarded to two recipients, Eric Murray and Hamish Bond of the ‘Kiwi Pair’.

The award recognises an outstanding career in rowing with Murray and Bond of New Zealand winning over a list of highly accomplished nominees.

Murray and Bond made up the most successful men’s pair ever seen in rowing. They came together in the pair in 2009 and began an incredible run of 69 unbeaten races that included two Olympic gold medals until retirement after the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

The duo first found success in the men’s four, becoming World Champions in 2007. A disappointing seventh-place finish at the Beijing 2008 Olympics left Murray and Bond dissatisfied. This may have acted as motivation for Bond to contact Murray and suggest rowing the pair. They never lost another race together.

Despite rather different personalities, both rowers had a common belief of always striving to develop and improve their technique, treating every training session as another chance to win and having the utmost respect for their competition. As Bond described their rivalry with Great Britain’s top men’s pair, Pete Reed and Andrew Hodge: ‘We drove them to become better athletes and they drove us to become better. So it was a good rivalry.’

Their training workload was huge with Bond and Murray doing enough so that even on a ‘bad’ day they could still win an Olympic title. This helped them set the World Best Time in the pair during the heats at the London Olympics. The time still stands today. They also set the World Best Time in the men’s coxed pair after deciding to ‘spice up’ their training and racing by entering two events at the 2014 World Rowing Championships. They raced in the pair and coxed pair, winning both.

Since retiring from rowing Murray has stayed involved in the sport while Bond has moved to cycling and has already proved himself internationally by winning a medal at the recent Commonwealth Games.

The Thomas Keller Medal presentation will take place on Saturday, 14 July 2018, during the World Rowing Cup in Lucerne, Switzerland. Murray and Bond will receive the medal from Dominik Keller, son of FISA’s former president, the late Thomas Keller.

To view the list of previous Thomas Keller Medal winners, click here.