Editor's letter Jun13-Jul13

It’s not every day you get to speak to a bona-fide Olympic gold medallist – let alone two of them. So I have to admit that just before I called Caroline and Georgina – aka the Evers-Swindell twins – for our cover story on their environmental work, I had a touch of nerves. What would they be like?

Experience has taught me that high-performing people with public profiles aren’t always what you’d expect from the smiling TV ads. Yet I can report that – shock, horror – Caroline and ‘Georgie’ are basically the nicest people you could meet. They’re simply two down-to-earth, funny, friendly Kiwi women who just happened to blitz the world of top-level rowing and win back-to-back Olympic golds.

And their contribution to the fight against climate change through an outfit called Project Litefoot is really inspiring stuff – you can read about it on page 22 – yet that’s not what struck me most about our conversation.

Both twins are now married, with two young children each, and the thing that really sunk in was a throwaway comment from Georgina. “Hey,” she said. “If you’re getting one thing done a week when you’ve got littlies, you’re stoked with yourself.” And boy, I know what she means.

About this time last year my lovely wife and I were blessed by the arrival of Birdie Roughan, a chubby-cheeked little monkey (not actually a monkey) who flipped our lives upside-down. Having kids is amazing – and it’s amazing how they take up every minute of your day. Our lives a few years back were pretty free and easy, yet these days – like Caroline and Georgina – getting one simple task done a week feels like an achievement.

So for me hearing that from the twins made their efforts to tackle climate change all the more impressive. Because they seemed all the more realistic.

I guess I thought that world champion athletes might have some sort of special reserve of energy that would explain their environmental zeal. But hearing the frazzled tone in Georgina’s voice when I called her back to check some facts made me realise that, well… they’re people, too. They’re people who have all the same domestic stresses as you and I. Yet they’re still doing their bit to look after our environment, despite the fact they have kids now.

Or maybe it’s because of it?

Greg Roughan
Editor, Green Ideas magazine