Searching for Gold with World Champ Ian Baird

I’ve been really lucky to grow up in East Lothian which has some of the best beaches and scenery in Scotland, and that makes it very easy to be an outdoor enthusiast! Scotland’s a fantastic place to explore and when we’re not heading to rowing regattas in all corners of the country I love a bit of hiking, mountain biking, horse riding or anything else in the great outdoors.

It was indeed my first rowing experience! The rowing club runs a ‘Trades Cup’ event where local clubs and businesses are invited to enter a team to compete in short races just outside the habour at North Berwick. The teams are provided with an experienced cox each and have a round-robin of what are essentially drag races. It’s awesome! Our crew were from the rugby club and we thoroughly enjoyed it - we even bought viking helmets to wear to psych out our opposition! We ended up winning the cup and three of the four crew are still rowing club members 10 years later (and two of us have now rowed an ocean)! I think we all loved the opportunity to get out onto the water and test ourselves, and rowing really shows you the value of teamwork; if you’re not working together, the boat doesn’t move well.

The World Championships are every 3 years and have been held in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands. Each time we go it gets bigger and more competitive. At the 2019 Worlds where we took Gold in the two Open events there were over 2000 rowers competing in a wide range of age classes. It was just incredible! As the competition has got fiercer, so has the training. Prep for a Championship can start 10-12 months before the event with lots of work on the rowing machine and refining technique in the boat. Our journey to becoming champions involved the gut-wrenching experience of missing out on the gold medal by 0.7 secs in the 2016 Worlds. The Silver medals were great but we knew we could have won, and that was the main motivational force behind all the training for the 2019 Championship, and it was incredibly satisfying to be rewarded for all of the hard work, early mornings, and rowing until you were sick on the machine.

The Atlantic came about very soon after our crew’s success at the championships. We’d achieved the goals that we’d set 3 years previously and wanted a new target to aim for. In the early stages one of the guys had found an ocean boat on ebay which started the conversation about ocean crossing. After long discussions we decided that, rather than trying to row across the North Sea or organise an independent ocean crossing, we’d enter the Talisker race, which gave us the twin benefits of a highly experienced organisation to keep us as safe as possible, and other boats to race! We were initially a crew of four, with three of us from our regular coastal crew and a friend who had never rowed before! Our fifth man (another rower from the club) was added when we approached him about using the challenge to raise money for a charity which supports his daughter, and he was so enthusiastic he wanted to get involved.

Forming the crew had its challenges. I knew the two guys I’ve trained and rowed with for years would give their all but didn’t know how the others would react to training and the crossing itself. Luckily we were given great support from a GB sport psychologist and a management consultancy who put us through all manner of team-building exercises so we knew what to expect from one another when things got tough.

The crossing was mentally and physically exhausting. We rowed in shifts of two hours on/two hours off, 24 hours a day for 36 days. We had huge waves and storms to deal with and the heat was intense as we were crossing around the equator. Hands and bums were in a terrible state and it was impossible to fuel our bodies against the amount of calories we were burning so we all lost a lot of weight (one of us dropped 17kg!). Those things made it incredibly tough so the lows were absolute rock-bottom, but that made the highs, when they did come, utterly wonderful.

One morning in the first week, when everyone was still suffering from seasickness, we were visited by a pod of around 40 bottlenose dolphins who clustered around the boat for half an hour, making an incredible noise and lifting our spirits hugely. Some of us even jumped in for a swim with them! That was magical. Equally magical was the bioluminescence we got to see on the pitch-black night shifts before the moon rose. The bow of the boat cutting through the water and every stroke of your blades would create flashes and ripples of blue-green light around us as we disturbed light-emitting plankton. It felt like we were in a visual effects shot from a film!

We didn’t take any liquids at all (we had a desalinator on board to make our drinking water) so no Irn Bru, but Tunnocks kindly donated Caramel Wafers which were a lifesaver when energy levels started to dip, Nairns gave us tons of oatcakes which I loved and my favourite of the Scottish foods we took was the amazing venison salami that we were given by Great Glen Foods. I could go through kilo of that in a couple of shifts.

Like many East Lothian kids I was introduced to ponies at local riding schools when I was wee and really enjoyed riding during the summer holidays. Later I got involved in breeding and showing sports horses and that opened the door to the Scottish Horse fraternity.

Actually one of the first films I worked on didn’t feature any horses! It was Avengers Infinity War which filmed for a few weeks in Edinburgh. I got the gig because they were looking for people who were confident in boats, although in the end there wasn’t a boat in sight, but I did get a great view of an exploding van. After that I was lucky enough to be asked to ride on the final season of Game of Thrones as a Dothraki and Stark Guard (mainly because I was the right height!) which was a great experience.

Outlander has been a fantastic show to work on and I’ve now been involved in 4 seasons of the show as a general rider and also as a riding double for six of the cast. We’re currently filming season 7 and the majority of the crew have been involved from the start so it’s like a big family on set and a bit more relaxed than other sets I’ve been on. Because I’m with the Horse Department the scenes I’m involved in are almost always on location and they find some amazing places to shoot. It’s tricky for them as the show is currently set in America and they have to find parts of Scotland that look like the New World in the late 1700s, but they do! Scotland has an incredible diversity of landscapes and historic buildings that lend a real gravitas to the films that are shot here and give the set builders a real head start when it comes to making everything look authentic. We shot in Blackness Castle near Linlithgow on Mary Queen of Scots and it felt so atmospheric. Similarly we had a huge, opulent feast scene in the cloisters of Glasgow University for Outlaw King, which was one of the most detailed and immersive sets you could experience (with live swans and real food!).

I’ve always felt lucky to have been born in a great country with some great people. I’m a big fan of the Scottish Rugby Team despite the agony they sometimes cause. I love the countryside and the folk and how the wider world sees us. I have a multitude of Clan names in my family heritage, including several conflicting ones like Campbell and MacDonald, so it’s a relief we’ve got over the old clan wars!

In modern Scotland, the Clans aren’t what they once were but it’s still fun to meet folk with the same surname and work out how related you are (in such a small population there’s often a connection!). I suppose it’s a reminder of that shared heritage and I frequently inform people that, through John Logie Baird, our Clan invented the television!

Modern Baird is my favourite and as a tartan is pretty difficult to beat! I love the dark blue base with the hints of heather from the green and purple lines. I’ve met friends at weddings who have picked it for a rental kilt because they don’t have any particular tartan of their own.