New Zealand rowers Eric Murray and Hamish Bond were received at the New Zealand Club at the Sheraton Hotel in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday (August 11)

SOUNDBITE (English) Hamish Bond, New Zealand rower, two time olympic gold medal winner in men's pair rowing:

"If I am honest, a big part of it is just relief. We have put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform. We trained a lot. We trained for a long time. And we wanna go out and deliver. And we have high expectations and probably the hardest thing about the Olympic Games is that it is all on one day. Well, you know, the final obviously is on one day. And that can be the, I guess, the overriding footnote of the last four years is decided on one day. So, there is a lot of pressure involved with it and we are really pleased we are able to execute toda ygo out and deliver a race we knew we were capable of."

SOUNDBITE (English) Eric Murray, New Zealand rower, two time olympic gold medal winner in men's pair rowing:

"People have seen what Hamish and I are able to achieve. And they should be looking at it and going 'right, if we can go there and live up to our capabilities then hopefully we can go out there and achieve what we have as well'. And that is all you can do, you know, you can't go out there and do something you have never done before. You just gonna go out there and do what you have done in the practice and the preparations for these events and take the satisfaction and knowing that you gave it 100 percent on the day. And that is all that we have done. We haven't done anything different than what we have done in our preparation and building up for this, we have just one what we have done before."