Pictures: Robert Trathen
Despite all double Olympic medallist Emma Twigg’s incredible achievements on the water over the past two decades, there are still some fans who are hard to impress – like arguably her biggest fan, Tommy Twigg.
Tommy’s just two years old and doesn’t yet comprehend that his mum is both an Olympic legend and one of the greatest rowers New Zealand has ever seen.
The littlest Twigg was excited to be in Paris during August’s Olympic Games, with his other mum, Emma’s wife Charlotte, and to see the Eiffel Tower.
“He knew he was away from home and doing something fun,” says Emma, 37, back at home after her fifth Olympic campaign. “But Mum winning a silver medal? Nah!
“But now when he sees the Olympic rings, he says, ‘Lympics. Mama. Rowing’. So it’s really cool that he associates all of those things. But the scale of it, he doesn’t understand yet.”
Emma’s almost at the end of an extraordinary 20-year international sporting career, in which she was a world rowing champion and world record holder in the single scull, an Olympic gold medallist at the 2021 Tokyo Games and a silver medallist at this year’s Games in Paris.
But her work behind the oars isn’t yet done. After a brief stint at home, she headed to Genoa, Italy, to compete in the world coastal rowing championships. There, Emma’s five-woman crew – including Paris Olympic gold medallists Brooke Francis and Lucy Spoors – won bronze in the coxed quadruple sculls.
Coastal rowing will be a new event at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. However, Emma – a former coastal rowing world champion – won’t commit to a sixth Olympics yet.
“I would be 41 in LA. I don’t know if a 41-year-old is going to win a sprint down the beach,” she laughs. “But I’m going to do it for a while and see how the sport develops.”
Emma admits winning silver in the Olympic single sculls final was just a little bittersweet. It came after a fierce battle with her friend and arch-rival Dutch rower Karolien Florijn.
“I still really wanted to win in Paris and I have a little disappointment around coming second,” the athlete confesses. “But when I look at the whole three-year campaign, I’m proud of the challenges we overcame along the way. In the actual week of the Olympics, I feel we nailed what we could.
“I just didn’t have the legs in the last part of the race to take the gold again.
“But at that moment, I was over the moon. When you’ve had Games where you haven’t won medals, you really appreciate winning one. When you stop and think about it, I’m 37 and it was my fifth Olympics, and my second-best Olympic performance. That’s massive.”
After being separated from Charlotte and Tommy for six weeks in the build-up to Paris, Emma thrived having her family – including her parents – in the grandstand.
“I knew when I had 750 metres to go in the final, the crowd noise would kick in. That is something that makes the Olympics so special,” Emma says. “It gets you through that final part of the race, regardless of what hurt locker you’re in.
“My mum can’t watch the races, she’s so nervous. She looks straight ahead and my brother tells her what’s happening.
“Having my family there to experience the things that come afterwards, like the welcome back to New Zealand House, was awesome. My first three Games were a sad experience, but this one was happy for us.”
Becoming a mum during the last Olympic cycle changed Emma’s outlook on life.
“He’s created balance and that probably prolonged my career because we adapted the way I did things,” she says. “Those times chilling, watching TV, resting between training sessions… Those all dissolve and instead you’re playing with your little boy.”
Diet and working with a sports nutritionist were also key to her success.
“Suddenly I had all this energy, I wasn’t getting sick and I was able to do more because I was fuelling my body right,” says Emma, who is an ambassador for Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
“As female athletes, we need good sources of protein and iron, and all those good things you get from red meat. If I haven’t had enough protein by the end of the week, I can’t survive. Nutrition’s becoming more and more important in the world of elite sport.”
After so many years competing at the highest level, Emma says she’ll miss training – her favourite part of being an athlete. But she wants to take time out to share her story in schools, then step away from sport and into the corporate world. She has a master’s degree in international sports management and spent a year doing an internship with the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2017.
“I’ll just wait and see what doors open,” Emma says. “I’m looking forward to some nice, chill holidays with my family.”
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