Eric Murray retires from rowing
Eric Murray has announced his retirement from the sport of rowing.
Murray, who turns 35 next Saturday, is one of the most recognisable faces of the sport after an eight-year unbeaten run in the coxless pair with Hamish Bond.
The “kiwi pair” pair teamed up in 2009 and have since been undefeated through 69 races, 24 regattas and produced six world titles as well as double Olympic gold. The pair also set the world best time of 6:08.50 at the London 212 Olympic Games, a record that still stands today.
Gold at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games capped off the incredible eight-year run of dominance, an historic feat of rowing by any boat.
After Rio, the pair was officially on hold for 12 months. Murray made the decision to take some time out of the boat, while Bond chose to pursue a cycling career.
While Murray was unable to provide comment at this time due to a contractual obligation with Women’s Day magazine, Bond spoke fondly of his former teammate.
“We are very proud of all that we have achieved as a combination over the last eight years and have far exceeded our wildest dreams in terms of our results
Like any great combination our partnership was underpinned by a mutual respect for each other’s abilities. Although we are quite different people our strengths and weaknesses combined in a way that the sum of our parts was better than the parts themselves.
We owe our success to a lot of individuals and organisations that enabled us to pursue our goals relentlessly. The support and environment created by Rowing NZ and High Performance Sport NZ has been world class. In conjunction with Rowing NZ's commercial partners, we have been lucky to have a number of loyal personal sponsors to whom we will be always grateful.
We are particularly looking forward to watching how the field of the men’s pair shapes up and wish the new Kiwi Pair of Tom and Jamie (along with the rest of the NZ squad) all the best for the upcoming season.”
The 2017 New Zealand men’s pair is Tom Murray and Jamie Hunter. Their international debut will be at the World Rowing Cup II in Poznan, Poland on the 15 th – 18 th June.