The biggest names in rugby have all done it; the likes of Dan Carter, Beauden Barrett, Brodie Retallick. Now, two Kiwi rowers are the first to undertake a Japanese sabbatical in their sport, as a way to give back for their historic gold in the men’s eight at the Tokyo Olympics.
Shaun Kirkham and Tom Mackintosh are currently training with the Toyoto Boshoku crew, trying to help them win the All Japan Championships next week.
"We are the first international rowers to come and race for a Japanese company team, but part of the gig was our contact over here. He saw Japanese rowing as a bit of a black box," Mackintosh explained.
"If we're direct on it they are, I guess, behind the times in how they row the boat. They're very regimented in their structure, which has a lot of benefit but if you just make small tweaks to their structure you can actually get some quite big changes."
It's a six-week stay, culminating in the regatta. But it was only initially meant to be a 10-day trip for Kirkham. He'd gone over to meet some of the people, including Hiroshi Sugito, who helped them in their build-up to the Olympic campaign in the town of Ōtsu, about half an hour from Kyoto.
"It was a way of sort of saying thanks to the city of Ōtsu that hosted us before the Olympics," Kirkham said. "Off the back of that, Hiroshi had this idea of potentially getting us to row for one of the company teams here. We negotiated back and forward.
"It was a really lengthy process that really got confirmed right at the last moment."
They wanted two athletes and that’s where Mackintosh joined the fray.
"I was interning for a finance company up in Auckland, so Hiroshi reached out and I made the decision I was going to segue back into high performance rowing and this just seemed like an adventurous, fun and more enjoyable way to do it," he said.
They both had to dust off some cobwebs – Kirkham more so, considering he hadn’t been in a competitive boat since the famous day in 2021, having retired from international rowing. Mackintosh had only had three months out of the high performance environment at Lake Karapiro.
But they soon got the hang of it again, and have shared valuable insight to their lesser-experienced local crewmates.
"We’ve made some huge changes to how these guys operate – they’re very good athletes," said Kirkham. "They’re very hard-working, extremely hard-working. They almost work too hard and we’ve just been an open book in terms of sharing our knowledge and that’s been incredibly rewarding to see progress."
Their goal is to make the Toyota Boshoku crew 10 seconds faster and close the gap to arch rivals NTT, who have dominated the regatta for years.
And it’s a regatta that will be held at the Sea Forest Waterway – the venue that brought New Zealand one of its most famous sporting moments. It's a venue that has plenty of meaning for both and has already brought back memories for Kirkham.
"I actually visited Sea Forest (in the initial 10-day trip) and that was a pretty emotional thing," he reminisced.
"Firstly being in Ōtsu and actually being able to meet the people that we could see, but we weren’t able to go anywhere near and being able to shake their hands and show appreciation. Then to go to the Olympic course, it felt really surreal to me to be back there because I almost remember it as if it were a dream, not a real place."
Kirkham’s not being tempted out of retirement by the return to the boat. But Mackintosh will make a push for Paris 2024, after spending time developing himself professionally outside rowing.
"But I had an epiphany, I’m 6’6" and I can pull on an oar so it’s not a thing to do in the mid-20s. When I come back I’ll be trialling for the New Zealand team. I’m a wee bit behind the eight ball but it’s all good. The goal’s Paris and I can probably hang up the oars after that."
Until then it’s navigating the nutritional delicacies of cod's penis and testicles, and monkfish liver they’ve been sampling on occasion before the All Japan Championships next week.
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