Maadi Cup 2022

Twelve hundred exhausted school rowers travel home from their national championships in Twizel today — a journey a thousand times shorter than the one to ...

It’s all in the training, the diet, the sleep, the sacrifices. It’s all in the mind. It’s all in the back. The number of competitors is severely curtailed — around a third of the usual number — with priority given to senior rowers who won’t get the chance to return. Some say it’s the cold, some say it’s the sediment. It’s all in the legs. It’s all in the breath. It’s the last race of the competition. It’s all in the body language. The sterling silver Maadi Cup trophy is mounted on a pyramid, a reference to its genesis in Egypt: a war-time regatta held on the Nile River between New Zealand soldiers and members of the Cairo Rowing Club by the leafy suburb of Maadi in 1943. The boat is a blade. If he and I had been paying more attention to the news coming out of Wuhan that weekend, we would have made more of the glory of that day.