With Olympic Gold, two World Rowing Cup Golds and a Henley Royal Regatta red box in the trophy cabinet, you’d think that New Zealand’s Tom Mackintosh had done it all. Now, he takes on a whole new kind of challenge in the form of The Boat Race. Having recently begun his MBA course at the University of Oxford, Tom also takes on the role of Men’s President at Oxford University Boat Club.
In Hastings, New Zealand, Tom Mackintosh grew up around the rowing success stories of his father – Jock Mackintosh – and began rowing himself in 2011 at the Hawke’s Bay Rowing Club upon his father’s encouragement. Rowing between Lindisfarne College and Hawke’s Bay, the young Mackintosh was pretty quickly hooked on the sport: “In my novice season, we had some early success – winning the novice eight at the North Island Club Championships – and I remember thinking ‘We’re the best novice eight in the whole of the North Island of New Zealand!’. I guess that gave me the bug, and the rest is history.”
Jock also played the role of Tom’s coach for several years until he moved away to the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2015. Even at this early point in his career, Mackintosh had aspirations to make the national team, weighing heavy on his choice of university: “Back then, it wasn’t as favourable to go off to a US university and come back to the New Zealand team, as it made the trialling process much more difficult and put up barriers to break into the program. Because of this, I decided to stay in New Zealand, and I’m pleased that I did. I made a lot of friends for life during my undergraduate, and now many of them are in the UK. I’m very fortunate to have a great network of friends here who see past the rowing and know you for being ‘Tom Mackintosh’, not ‘Tom the Rower’.
Despite having a close circle based in the UK, this is the first time Mackintosh has been part of a UK rowing program. As much as he identifies similarities between here and the scene in New Zealand, there are also noticeable differences: “New Zealand has a good pedigree in rowing – we topped the medal table in Tokyo – and if you took our top schoolboy eight and the top UK schoolboy eight I think it’d be a pretty good race, so fairly similar in terms of the school rowing level. We don’t have the same population size, so numbers are a bit smaller, but there is so much passion for the sport in the UK – it’s much more of a household sport here than back home. It’s also a much more accessible sport than in New Zealand, which I think is the main difference.”
The Oxford rowing culture speaks for part of this, with hundreds of amateur athletes rowing for their college boat clubs, of which Oxford has 36, on a stretch of the river less than two kilometres in length. Atop the numerous college clubs is Oxford University Boat Club, with men’s and women’s squads that train for their respective duels with Cambridge University Boat Club. Alongside this, Tom was elected President for the 2024/5 season despite the club and university being new to him. “It’s a pretty unique position to be in. I never really intended to go for the Presidency as there are people on the ground here who would do a great job, but some alumni suggested that I should throw my hat in the ring. I was pretty clear with my leadership style from the get-go: I’ve been exposed to different types of rowing environments from school level, club level, university level, through to Olympic level, as well as coming back to the sport after six months off.”
Before coming to Oxford, Mackintosh had two incredibly successful Olympic campaigns, albeit in very different boat classes. His gold medal came in Tokyo in 2021, where he sat in the bow seat of the NZ men’s eight. For 2024, he shifted to the single, again donning the all-black Kiwi unisuit for Paris, eventually placing fifth. “After the incredible experience that was Tokyo, I spent some time in the pair with Matt Macdonald, and we had varying degrees of success – a fun campaign to be a part of. I’d already achieved more than I ever thought I could with the gold medal, so why not go for the last hurdle? I always thought I might make the Olympic Games, I never thought I’d win gold, but we did. What’s the next hardest event? The single.”.
Mackintosh also reflects fondly on his career, not only from a sporting perspective but also academically: “I’ve found myself in moments where unique opportunities have presented themselves: whether it’s pitching for OUBC presidency, being part of the MBA here, or so on, and the opportunity came up to race the single about 16 months out from the Paris games. I was in Japan then, but I knew I could beat some of the scullers and had the drive to do so. I called the NZ Rowing Team General Manager of Performance, Judith Hamilton, and asked if they’d consider letting me trial for the boat. After an initial response of ‘What do you mean? You haven’t been here for six months?’ she agreed to let me trial alongside three other athletes in a best-of-three race.”
After training twice a day for two months on his own in Japan, and with the NZ Rowing Team trials fast approaching, it became a race between Mackintosh and Tom Murray after Jordan Parry and Robbie Manson withdrew due to illness and injury. Mackintosh had to call in favours to get a boat out to Tokyo for him to train in, and he spent just two weeks with the NZ team before the trials but came out on top in the first two of the races, allowing him to make his international sculling debut. “I raced the World Rowing Cup in 2023, and won a bronze medal behind Ollie [Zeidler] and Sverri [Nielsen], so then the belief was beginning, and I started to bring people along on my journey. I qualified the boat at the World Rowing Championships in Serbia in 2023, again winning a bronze medal and finishing just a few seconds off Ollie [Zeidler] and Simon [van Dorp], starting to think that I was onto something. I won in Poland [World Rowing Cup III] just before the games, too. The final at the Olympics wasn’t my best race, but that can happen. I didn’t come home with a medal, but I’m very proud of what I’ve done in the single. Would I have done it any other way? No way.”
Tom speaks very fondly of his journey so far, including flipping his single alone in the middle of a lake in Croatia, and also speaks with full confidence of his new squad. He looks forward to the upcoming season – despite the unfortunate cancellation of the Fours Head – including Trial VIIIs, fixtures, and The Boat Race on Sunday 13th April 2025. The undertone of our conversation always came back to taking every opportunity that comes your way and taking chances as and when they come up – never being afraid to put yourself out there. Tom Mackintosh is a fine example of the fact that you never quite know where those opportunities will lead you.
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