About two weeks before Nadine Hunt was meant to compete in the Cairns half Ironman event in July last year, she crashed her bike on the highway. It was the last long training ride before the race and she hit a bump before sliding on to the road and into traffic.
“I just remember looking up and seeing the number plate of the car,” Hunt says. “It was one of those moments where it just changed a lot of things for me. It made me realise how quickly or how close things can be and so much can be taken away.”
The car didn’t hit her; the driver was a cyclist too and therefore, Hunt thinks, more aware. Her body and bike escaped with minor bruising and grazes. While for some people such a scare might cause them to step back from certain things, the crash had the opposite effect on Hunt.
“I had a coffee with a couple of teammates who were doing the [full] Ironman, and we were just joking and I was like, ‘oh, I should upgrade,’” she says. “I just thought you know what, I’ve been training with these guys all year, yes I haven’t ridden over 100km, yes I haven’t done the big swims, but I know I can run a marathon. And in that moment I just said to my coach, ‘Do you think I’d finish?’ And he said yes.”
So, four days out from the event Hunt changed her registration to the full 4km swim, 180km ride and 42.2km run.
“I got to the finish line, in just over 12 hours, and I had the best day,” she says. “I just knew that I could do it. It was just such a positive experience that literally the day after I was like, ‘I’m going to come back and do this next year and I’m going to train for it.’”
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Just 15 months and another Ironman later, Hunt will on Saturday become the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman to compete in the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. The lamalaig and Kaantju woman says it is a huge privilege to reach Kona, 40 years after Western Yalanji elder Terry O’Shane became the first Aboriginal man to do so.
“I want to show the goodness of our people, but also our culture, on the world stage and also hopefully inspire other women, both mob and non-mob,” she says. “If you want to do things, you can do them and there shouldn’t be any limitations because you’re a woman or because you’re a mother. It’s a real privilege and something I don’t take lightly and it’s just given me more drive. Because who knows who it can inspire by doing that?”
Over the last few years, as she has competed and trained on Yirrganydji country in Gimuy/Cairns, Hunt has taken strength from the land around her.
“All these beaches that we ride up and back over 180km, that’s where we grew up, that’s where we went camping and fishing; where my mum was a young girl and my pop took them out hunting,” she says. “There’s just so many memories and stories on that bike coastline that makes it so significant for me.”
Hunt’s connection to country and the people in far north Queensland have enabled her to get through the hardest training block of her life, between 16 and 18 hours a week, in the lead up to Kona.
“It’s been ridiculous, but I’ve been able to embrace it,” she says. “To just be out on country, it doesn’t feel like it’s a chore. It’s a blessing to me and something that strengthens me as a person. Obviously Kona is going to be the first Ironman I do away from home but learning and looking into that culture over there of the local people and their significance to connect to the land and their sea – that really aligns with me and my family and my culture.
“Pre-race I always take the time to stand on the beach and to feel the sand and to feel country and to just reflect on the journey leading into it. And so I feel like it’s going to be no different over there for me.”
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Before triathlons Hunt was a runner, but it was not something she had an interest in growing up in a sport-obsessed family. “If I didn’t have a ball at my feet, or in my hand, I [was] just not going running,” she says. While studying a sport and recreation certificate at Tafe in her early 20s, Hunt was cajoled into taking part in a run challenge. “I did really well and beat the teacher’s record and then she was nominating me to try out for this Indigenous Marathon Project.”
After some initial reluctance, she gave it a go and found endurance running was giving her purpose in life at a time when she had been lacking it. “The sport just opened a world of opportunities to me,” she says. “I lacked a lot of confidence as a young woman in my 20s and didn’t really have a go at things. This project allowed me to build my confidence.”
But with multiple marathons under her belt, Hunt gave birth to her son in 2018 and found afterwards that running was becoming something she resented rather than thrived off. As she was thinking about what would fill the hole left by running, another Indigenous Marathon Project graduate, Nat Heath, was setting up a group called TriMob.
“He was trying to start this organisation to use triathlon to encourage and inspire our mob to get involved, and something about it really intrigued me,” Hunt says.
Terrified of swimming, at first she thought she would just try cycling, but after competing in her first Ironman relay team it didn’t take long for Hunt to be enticed by the full discipline.
“My body liked it, I enjoyed it, and then soon after the 70.3 relay I was signing up for triathlon programs, that was just two years ago,” she says. “It’s funny how much it’s progressed from trying to find something that kept me stimulated and mentally stable to be going to Kona.”
A sixth-place finish in her age group in the 2022 Cairns Ironman, her second ever, secured Hunt a spot at the world championships where she will make history this weekend.
“I really want to showcase the strength of women,” she says. “I always say these sports are for us, because we have this ability to endure, and it’s why we’re so good at it. I really hope women see the strength in that, but also, everyone sees this strength in a First Nations woman, and are proud of that.”
