The Black Fins are heading to one of the biggest global events for surf lifesaving. Dave Crampton catches up with a silver medallist on debut at last year’s world champs and a national team debutante.
Surf lifeguards Briana Irving and Claudia Kelly are looking forward to doing the Black Fins team proud.
Already world title winners with the 2018 Junior Black Fins, they are about to head to Texas to compete at the world’s biggest three-day test match for surf lifeguards.
The International Surf Rescue Challenge, starting on September 20, is the biggest international ocean and beach competition outside the world championships.
This year’s ISRC was postponed from 2021 due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. NZ has been runner up on most previous occasions, including in 2019 when both a senior and junior team competed. Both Kelly and Irving were in the 2019 Junior Black Fins. Kelly was team captain and both NZ teams placed second behind Australia.
Now, both are together in the Black Fins. Kelly, 21, is making her debut; Irving, 20, already has a world championships medal as a Black Fin.
Irving, the sport’s premier sprinter, said it was an honour to wear the fern again. “I’m super stoked to be racing under the black cap, racing against the best of the best,” she says. “I’m pretty proud to be able to do it again.”
Irving knows Australia is the team to beat but is determined to play her part so the Black Fins can return victorious.
“Australia is always going to be a big challenge, but if we race well and have self-belief, I think we can do it if we put our minds to it,” she says.
Twelve Black Fins will compete in Texas, including siblings Gus and Molly Shivnan, the latter who trains with Kelly, a paddler and a swimmer.
Irving has been coached by leading Athletics NZ coach James Mortimer since 2020, training with top athletes Zoe Hobbs, Georgia Hulls and Portia Bing, the latter two being Oceania titleholders.
Last month Hobbs, in New Zealand’s best ever 100m performance at a World Athletics championship, missed out on the final by 0.01 seconds. Irving is clearly in good company; she is also a former U18 200m national champion.
“I do most of training with 200m sprinter Georgia Hull. I find it so motivating as my skills are transferred to the beach,” Irving says.
The biannual three-day test match will test the expertise of surf lifeguards among the world’s top six nations. Events include a surf race, board race, surf ski race, and beach disciplines. The competition started in 1937 as a trans-Tasman challenge, adding South Africa in 1999 for a tri-nations event. In 2015 Canada, Japan and the USA were included.
Surf Lifesaving NZ High Performance Sport Manager, Tanya Hamilton is excited to see what the team, which has a good mix of experienced and new talent, will do in Texas.
“The ISRC is the perfect opportunity for our athletes to develop and test their skills in competition outside of the World Championships,” she says.
However, unlike the world championships, the pool element is not contested.
For Kelly, making her Black Fin debut is the next logical step after being named as first reserve for the World Championships last year. A Junior Surf Lifesaving Ironwoman world champion, she aims to make the Nutri-Grain Ironwoman series in Australia and will train there next year. She also hopes to make her first Black Fins world championships team at the Gold Coast that year.
Her journey differs from Irving’s as she had to deal with injury setbacks. She broke her foot one year which took her out for the rest of that season and has had several stress fractures. But she knows making the Black Fins team is next level.
“It’s a big step up to make the Black Fins,” she says. “I’ve had a few tough years pre-Covid with injuries. It’s been a pretty long road between black caps so I’m pretty stoked to be back here. I think resilience is a term I’ve been using a lot in my sporting life, just knowing that I’ve done it before, and I can get back there again.”
At last year’s world surf lifesaving championships in Italy, Irving, one of the world’s youngest competitors there, won a silver medal in the open beach sprint on debut. She now has four world titles and 11 national titles in beach sprints. At the previous world championships in 2018, both were the Junior Black Fin’s youngest members and won that world title, with Irving winning three individual U19 world titles.
Both athletes are also students. Irving studies sports and recreation, majoring in management, at the University of Auckland, and this year Kelly is doing five papers, studying at the University of Otago. She is in the middle of a biomed degree, majoring in infection and immunity, with a neuroscience minor. She is then hoping to do post-graduate studies in medicine and become a doctor.
As well as studying and training, the pair also must do a requisite number of hours as volunteer lifeguards to be able to compete. There’s little free time for much else.
“'I'm tired 24/7,” Kelly says. “I’m trying to get into medical school. I live in the library - I’m not joking. It’s the library, the harbour or the pool.”
Irving is not much different. “I do work, I do placement, I do uni, and I train – that’s about it. That’s my life.”
While this month the pair can focus on competition, the real focus of surf lifesaving is to make ‘fitter faster lifeguards’. “It’s to make the best possible lifeguards we can have, and as an added bonus we get to do a sport that is really fun,” Kelly says.
“I like the two elements – the lifeguarding and the surf competitions,” Irving adds. “You’re helping out and giving back to the community and keeping the beaches safer –but you're also training to be a professional athlete.”
This year, the Junior Black Fins will not compete at the ISRC. Instead, they raced in a newly developed competition with their Australian counterparts on the Gold Coast last month.
