New Zealand rower Eric Murray joined the throngs chasing after Pokemon recently. But it’ll be the rest of the field who’ll be likely chasing him and partner Hamish Bond in the men’s pair final on Thursday.
“Everyone watched Pokemon on TV and it was a bit of a cultural craze when I was a young kid,” Murray said when asked about his latest addiction.
“It’s one of those things that pulls out the child in you… In some respects I’m a bit of a sheep, I tried it and liked it,” added the 34-year-old Kiwi.
The pair are far from sheep-like when it comes to rowing, however, having notched up an incredible unbeaten streak of 68 races, dating back to 2009 and winning six world titles along the way.
As a result, the defending Olympic champions are overwhelming favourites to take the gold once again at Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio on Thursday.
They cruised through their semi-final on Tuesday, winning by over three seconds ahead of Great Britain and South Africa to book their place in yet another final.
“We’re not going to approach it any differently. We always go out to win every race, so it’s basically going to be the same,” explained Bond, whose younger brother, Alistair, is also in the New Zealand rowing team – in the lightweight four.
Speaking about the challenging conditions that the rowers have faced in Rio, where a full day’s events were postponed on Sunday because of strong winds and rough water, Murray said: “Every place has its challenges. There are a few more challenges here but overall the water’s still water.
“I think it’ll be pretty fair. Generally we’d probably back ourselves in challenging conditions. We’ve been training in some challenging conditions recently,” he added.
As for what makes the exceptional New Zealand crew so successful, Murray joked: “I think we’re just better-looking.
“We don’t do a hell of a lot different from everyone else. They train hard, we train harder. We’ve just tried to refine our technique and training philosophy to go faster.
“Not only the Olympics, but every race, you have an expectation of how you’re going to go and most people have a realistic expectation,” Murray said. “We just set our expectation very high and that’s to go out and win. That’s just how it is. There’s only one thing we can do, and that’s meet that expectation.”
Aiming to prevent that from happening will be crews from Great Britain, Italy, South Africa, France and Australia.