THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Drummoyne Rowing Club in Sydney, Australia offered Rusty a paid position, he took it. As will be discussed in Chapter 131, he later coached the Australia World Champion Men’s Lightweight Coxless- Fours of 1980 and 1981 and the 1984 Olympic Silver Medal Men’s Quad.5676 Renaut: “Twenty-four carat Rusty, as he was called after Munich, remarried and seemed to enjoy life in Sydney more than in his later years in New Zealand. When he died there in 1990, aged 62, he left behind a generation of totally loyal rowers.”5677 The Legend Renaut: “After a race, if his crew had done well he was nowhere to be seen. ‘There will be plenty of people there patting them on the back and basking in reflected glory. It’s when they fail that they need me around.’”5678 For as long as there are Kiwi rowers, they will tell tales of Rusty Robertson. Many will actually be true. Veldman: “Rusty was a taciturn guy. He wasn’t one you could actually sit down and have a good jaw with until you had a couple of beers, but then you knew if you had a couple of beers you were going to pay a hell of a price the next day because he’d row you to a standstill. “He’d say, ‘You want another beer?’ “You’d say, ‘Ooh Rusty, I’d love another beer,’ but you knew that if you had more than one pint, the next day he’d say, ‘All right, lads, I think we need to work this off,’ so you were always betwixt and between. “He was my coach, right through. What always used to amuse me was that he’d be in 5676 See Chapter 131. 5677 Renaut, op. cit., p. 9 5678 Ibid. the coaching boat sitting behind us or to one side, and we’d be rowing along and he’d be just looking. He wouldn’t say a word, and then all of a sudden he’d bring the megaphone to his mouth . . . and he’d hold it there for a while, and everybody’d sharpen up . . . and then he’d just put it away again, and nothing was said. “‘Was he lookin’ at me, or was he lookin’ at the guy behind me?’ “And you never knew, but as soon as that megaphone came up, everybody went [demonstrates sitting tall with good posture and extra discipline]. ‘I could be in for a bollocking here,’ but he never said a bloody word. “He was a great coach. He was very intuitive, and he had great psychology with us. I remember he’d say, ‘Right, you boys, go on back to the village. I’m going to stay on and watch the other crews train,’ and he’d be sitting at the Olympic course or wherever we were, and he’d come back a few hours later, and at night we always had our beer. We had to have that one beer, and we’d be sitting around, and he’d say, ‘I’ve been watching those East Germans. (It was always the East Germans or the Russians we had to worry about.) I think this is what they’re going to do when we race,’ he would say, ‘and I’m going to make a little program that’s going to counter their moves.’ “And of course we’d believe him! “He’d say, ‘The East Germans are going to go here. We’re going to go there. We should overlap their sprint, and then we’ll carry it on, and we’re going to start the next one a little bit early so to put them off balance because we have already extended ours a little beyond theirs,’ and it was all that psychological stuff. “‘Yeah! We can do that! Yeah! That’s right! Go for it!’ 1561
