Born and bred in Newzealand, Emma Twigg began rowing as a junior, where she started her journey to become a World Champion in the single sculls as a junior, Under23 and senior – a rare trifecta.
A consistent World Cup and World Championship medalist, Emma has not placed outside the top four in the world since 2009. In 2005, she was awarded the Halberg Emerging Talent Award at the New Zealand Sports Awards and in 2014 was named World Rowing’s female rower of the year, having claimed the title of World Champion just months prior.
Having competed at three Olympics throughout her career, Emma understands all too well the popularist-peddled narrative that the Games are the ‘greatest show on earth’. In rebuttal, she offers a distinct, nuanced view that the headlines often miss.
“To be honest the Olympic experiences haven’t been the highlight of my career, each one has been disappointing for different reasons. In London I was in 4th place and I placed the same in Rio which was devastating. I have always felt really low after the Olympics, however reflecting on it the experience of the Olympic Games makes it worth it and is the reason I keep coming back.”
In 2018, Emma decided to make a comeback to international rowing; given her mixed experiences of the circuit previously, some found it challenging to understand the reasons for her return.
“I was working for the International Olympic Committee and went to Winter Olympics in Pyongyang. I saw my New Zealand teammates competing and was inspired by the value of being an athlete and decided to get back in a boat to experience that feeling again. Now it’s much more about that experience and I’m just loving being back in the boat.”
“When I came back I had no idea how it would turn out, I had always been in a programme since the age of eighteen until retiring from rowing so coming back was an unknown. I definitely questioned whether I could get back to that standard, and it was a surprise to be in top 2 in the world that year. I gained so much confidence from that and now I have no doubt now that I can compete and that I can actually keep improving despite getting older. I’m just learning how to listen to my body and knowing a bit better what works for me which has helped a lot.”
During a regular racing season, rowers from New Zealand and Australia travel over to Europe and end up spending a lot of time away from home. As a result, rowers from down-under often have a very different experience from the Europeans:
“I think it’s potentially a reason why many New Zealand or Australian rowers retire earlier than Europeans, we see many retiring at the age of thirty when they could potentially go on for another four years. It’s very hard to leave families for three months every year and historically it’s been a problem. But now the programme is better and it accepts those who have families and allows people to have a life outside of rowing more, which makes those periods easier.”
In a similar vein, the New Zealand-Australian rivalry seems to be a part of the fabric of sport, but how well does it translate to the water?
“I think it’s not quite the same rivalry as in other sports, maybe rugby. For rowing we don’t always have Australian crews to race, and we just want to be the best regardless of where our competition is from.”
In 2019 Emma came to compete at Henley Royal Regatta and won the Princess Royal Challenge Cup; she may be better known on the Olympic circuit, but she’s not hesitant about showing Henley some love.
“It was pretty awesome, I’ve raced there before and nothing compares to Henley. Having spent some time in retirement to come back to the regatta was pretty cool and I definitely appreciated it more knowing I might not get the opportunity to go back.”
In recent years, we’ve seen some foreign crews do particularly well in the junior events at HRR, for example, Scotch College from Australia winning the Princess Elizabeth Cup. Yet, we seem to have very few crews from NZ and Australia make the trip.
“I’m not sure why it’s not a target, because I’m sure they’d like to go. Although in our system a lot of the prestigious schools are also rugby schools, which is our national sport. So when the rowing season stops the rugby season starts and many of the athletes from the top eight are also in the first fifteen, so they can’t do both. It might just take one crew to go over and be successful to start a trend for people going over to Henley.”
In the UK, we have significant junior events such as National Schools’ and Henley. Many British rowers are unfamiliar with the set-up in New Zealand, so we asked Emma for the low-down:
“In New Zealand the biggest regatta is the Maadi Cup, it’s the big schools’ regatta, the pinnacle of the sport for juniors. We unfortunately lose a lot of rowers after junior level because they leave school and don’t have a connection to any of the clubs, but if you do well at Maadi you can get invited to one of the Regional Performance Centres and go on a performance pathway for the national team. Some athletes have also gone to the US for scholarships which wasn’t viewed very well by Rowing New Zealand initially, but they’re opening up to it more now as they’re realising what a great opportunity it is for our young athletes. I think with these two pathways for our juniors we have a bright future and that will feed into the success of the national team.”
Whenever we have a guest interview on the podcast, we grill them with the following gruelling questions; read on to hear Emma’s answers…
What’s your favourite place to row?
“Lucerne, I think many rowers will say something similar. It’s probably a tie between Lucerne and Lake Bohinj in Slovenia where we do our training camp pre-Worlds.”
What’s the favourite race that you’ve been a part of?
“Head of the Charles when I was part of some of the great eights, rowing with some of the best people in the world. Normally one person is team captain and they ask round the top scullers from the World Championships and form the crews out of people that are interested. We’re all friends anyway so it makes for a great trip to Boston and it’s such a fun race. For competitive races, my race against Kim [Brennan, Australia] in the Sydney World Cup in 2014 was great because it was super close and there was a real sprint for the line.”
What was your favourite race to watch?
“Women’s single scull at Athens, not a very popular one but it was a race filled with classy athletes and some of the greats of rowing, Ruschow-Stomporowski, Karsten and Knapkova.”
That’s all for now. If you’re hungry for more, check out any of our other pieces from The Catch, listen to the latest podcast episode, or flick through our race previews.
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Images by Roesie Percy
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