Sitting behind a desk, noticing that his body was becoming sore, Tom Mackintosh realized he needed to change seats. Quickly.
After five months in the corporate world, the Olympic champion rower couldn’t take it anymore. He decided it was time to get back on board and try to win another medal for New Zealand at the Paris Games.
“I’m not sure if you’d call it an epiphany or not, but one day my body was really sore from sitting at the table. I remember thinking that the Paris Olympics were only 16 months away and that I had spent as much time away from sport as I could,” recalled Mackintosh. “If I wanted to go back, I needed to do it now.”
Mackintosh won an Olympic gold medal with the New Zealand men’s eight in Tokyo, then took time off from rowing so he could work at an investment firm in Auckland. It didn’t take long to realize that his body wasn’t made for a table.
He was watching the national rowing championships on television in his office when a colleague asked how he would compare to those still competing.
“I told him, ‘I think I’ve been pretty competitive, having raced with these guys my whole career,’” Mackintosh said. “And he said, ‘Well, Tom, to win the race, you’d have to be in the race.’ And I’m thinking, ‘that’s a great point.’ It was quite a moment for me.”
Mackintosh, 27, studied accounting, finance and management. He took the opportunity to intern at the investment firm where he worked alongside analysts and research teams, getting a glimpse into corporate life.
At first, he didn’t really want to return to competition. But as time went on, he said he began to miss rowing and “realized it was a unique opportunity.”
“It wasn’t that long of a period of time for the Paris Olympics in the scheme of life, I might as well give it one more shot,” he said of his thought process at that time. “Not everyone in the world has the chance to compete in the Olympic Games. I looked to the future, Tom, and I feel like I’d be upset with myself if I didn’t come back.”
Working gave him the vision to also evaluate the numbers of his rowing career.
“I was learning the value of time and investments,” he said, “and I realized that I invested a lot of my body here.”
Mackintosh said he misses the greater freedom he had away from rowing, like being able to switch off at the weekend, reconnect with old friends and play more golf.
“Rowing is a full-time job,” he said. “You have physical therapy, recovery, stretching, meetings, all of that, so that adds up to the 40 hours a week that you can essentially be working. My body is my asset and I need to be physically fit, strong and able to perform well in rowing,” he said. “And so every decision I make in my life has an impact on that. , 24-7.”
After leaving the investment company, Mackintosh went to Japan to row for a company team so he could compete again. When he felt he was in good shape, he requested a tryout for the New Zealand men’s singles boat and ended up making the team.
He has shown good results since then, despite taking five months off. Mackintosh won bronze at the 2023 world championships and qualified the New Zealand boat for the Olympics.
With things going well following his time out of sport, Mackintosh has not ruled out doing something similar with his work, life and sport balance in the next Olympic cycle.
“It’s an avenue I’d like to explore,” he said. “I know the commitment this requires. I know what it takes to win Olympic medals and it’s a big commitment. So this is something you need to ask yourself, have an honest conversation with yourself at some point in the future, to know if you want to go down this path again.”
And he’ll also have to ask himself whether he has what it takes to get back behind a desk, no matter what he ends up doing.
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