New Zealand's Ian Wright would have made his mentor proud.

The Waikato man, who took up the role of Switzerland's head rowing coach in late 2014, guided the country's lightweight men's four to gold at the Rio Olympics on Friday morning.

The Swiss boat won gold in a six-boat A final that saw the New Zealand crew of James Lassche, Peter Taylor, Alistair Bond and finish fifth.

Wright said when he took up his new job that he was aware of following in the footsteps of the late legendary Kiwi rowing coach Harry Mahon.

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"I'm privileged," Wright said when first appointed.

"There's been quite a long and illustrious history of coaches with Switzerland - obviously Harry Mahon springs to mind and he was my old coach too."

Mahon guided the New Zealand men's eight to world titles in 1982 and 1983 before heading to Switzerland in 1987.

A former Olympic bronze medallist, Wright's biggest task when he took over was to turn the hugely-promising young crew - the country's best boat - into Olympic medal winners.

He brought three members of the crew down to New Zealand last summer to train and compete in major regattas, and while they were outshone then by their Kiwi counterparts, Wright got it right when it counted. Switzerland, world champions last year, claimed gold in a time of six minutes 20.51 seconds, heading off fellow medallists Denmark and France, with the Kiwis a disappointing fifth in 6:28.14.

New Zealand had won the two World Cup events they entered this year leading up to Rio, with Taylor out injured and reserve Matthew Dunham in the boat, and went into the Rio regatta as favourites to grab gold.

Wright was the Waikato Regional Performance Centre coach when appointed to the Swiss role, and had already had success at international level with NZ crews. He was the coach of the New Zealand men's eight that won back-to-back world under-23 championship titles in 2013 and 2014, with the bulk of that crew forming the senior men's eight which will chase a medal at the Rio Olympics on Sunday morning (NZ time).

A bronze medallist in the NZ men's coxed four at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Wright gave credit to the Coach Accelerator Programme run by High Performance Sport New Zealand, under the guidance of Alex McKenzie, for his progress as a coach.

"That's definitely given me some more skills that I didn't have and given me the confidence to do this job, along with the experience I've had as a coach and an athlete from way back."