Olympic Rower Takes on the Cambridge Team

Olympic bronze medal-winner and Oxford student, Invercargill-born Storm Uru, 29, says the stress of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race is the fun side of getting his MBA.

Uru was ready for a break from the sport, and wanted to pursue his master’s degree in business administration at Oxford after a year on the Bank of New Zealand’s trading desk. Now, more than half a year of six hours’ rowing and eight hours’ study a day has culminated in the four-mile 374-yard contest on the Thames in London.

“Coming here, at the beginning I didn’t quite get it,” Uru, whose sailboat-loving father gave him his distinctive name. “You’re almost doing the same amount of training as in elite international rowing. I see rowing as the fun side, study as the hard side. There’s your balance.”

Uru won a gold medal in the lightweight double sculls at the 2009 world championships and bronze at the 2012 London Olympics. He rowed in the bow seat of the University of Oxford’s Dark Blue eight in the 6 April event, the 160th time the two British universities have raced since 1829, and the first time the Oxford team had an Olympic medallist on board.

Original article by Ben Priechenfried, Bloomberg, April 4, 2014

Photo by Christopher Lee/Getty Images.