With just 99 days till the Commonwealth Games, the global pandemic has left many Kiwi athletes with a short runway back into international competition. Suzanne McFadden spoke to seven women on the dash for Birmingham.
From a famine to a feast.
A New Zealand team expected to hit 230 will line up in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in July (just 13 have been officially selected so far), and many have been starved of international contests since last year’s Tokyo Olympics - in some cases, even further in the past.
But suddenly they face a flood of competition, with codes like swimming, athletics, basketball and hockey, all having world championships mere weeks before their athletes need to front up again in Birmingham.
Even as New Zealand slowly exits restrictions, and our sportspeople can leave and return to the country without the spectre of MIQ, Covid still lurks. There are athletes still recovering from the virus, and others trying to avoid it. Some trying to make up for time lost.
The new CEO of the New Zealand Olympic Committee, Nicki Nicol, acknowledges the team face "a short runway" into one of the pinnacle events on our sporting calendar, and is trying to make sure the athletes have everything they need to succeed.
“What we’re learning in sport now is the same for everyone – it’s how we best adapt to the situation. Our focus is working with high performance sport and sports organisations - we’ve got 100 days, how can we best use that time?” she says.
With the clock counting down, LockerRoom spoke to seven female athletes working their way towards Birmingham.
Julia Ratcliffe – Hammer throw
Julia Ratcliffe is running, throwing, bowling and shooting (a netball) in the belly of the AUT Millennium – all while wearing her mask.
The reigning Commonwealth Games champion hammer thrower hasn’t had Covid yet, and she’s determined to sidestep it.
“There’s only 100 days to go, and if Covid takes 14 of those…” she ponders while taking part in the '100 Days to Birmingham' fun sports tournament on Tuesday.
She’s kept a low profile since finishing ninth at the Tokyo Olympics, but returned for the Night of 5s at AUT Millennium last month, and threw beyond the Commonwealth Games performance standard of 71.50m set by Athletics NZ (her distance, a mighty 72.33m). That should make her a shoo-in for Birmingham.
“I’m just trying to stay happy and healthy now,” she says. “I know my training works, so I just have to put my head down, focus and make every session count. It’s all the stuff in between that can derail you,” Ratcliffe says.
She moved from Wellington to Auckland last week, to join her partner; she'll continue to work as a senior analyst in financial markets at the Reserve Bank, but from their Auckland office.
It's also meant a change in training scene (the AUT Millennium again), which she sees as a good thing.
“Because of Covid, life can get very insular very quickly. Moving up here was terrifying, I haven’t done anything so big for so long. But it’s cool having more throwers around, which will be the biggest adjustment for me,” she says.
Ratcliffe, who'll compete at the world track and field champs in Oregon two weeks before the Commonwealth Games, can’t wait to be lifted up by crowds and noise again. And she's excited by the strong possibility she won’t be the only New Zealand woman spinning in the hammer cage in Birmingham. In fact, there could be three.
Fellow Olympian Lauren Bruce won her maiden national title in Hastings last month with a season’s best throw of 73.34m – pushed by Nicole Bradley, who threw a personal best 70.45m (bettering the Games ‘B’ standard).
“At the first two Comm Games, there was only me,” Ratcliffe says. “So having three athletes in the black singlet would be pretty awesome.”
Sulu Fitzpatrick - Netball
While the Covid virus has truly tested the mettle of Silver Fern Sulu Fitzpatrick, she reckons some good has come from it.
The Mystics captain came down with Covid as soon as she returned home from the Quad Series in England in January, and she’s still feeling some effects of the illness, which knocked her flat and put a strain on her heart and lungs.
“Covid has affected our run-up to the Games massively, but also in a good way. It’s made us more resilient, very flexible and we’re learning to take things day-by-day,” she says.
“Sometimes as an athlete you get too caught up in the end goal. But Covid has taught us to take everything moment by moment, and enjoy the grind.”
The next 99 days are packed with netball. The ANZ Premiership runs up until four weeks before the Silver Ferns leave for Birmingham, and there’s a trial in the week straight after it. Then there will be another Cadbury Series against the NZ Men and the NZ A side.
“It’s a pretty tight turnaround, but it will interesting to see who rises to the occasion,” Fitzpatrick says.
The word ‘redemption’ will be bandied about when discussing the Silver Ferns in the next few months, after a team in disarray failed to make the podium at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
“There’s definitely a strong feeling of wanting to restore pride in our dress,” Fitzpatrick says. “I think the girls did it at the 2019 World Cup, but in terms of this new group, we really want to consolidate and make sure we bring pride to the silver fern.”
Fitzpatrick, voted New Zealand’s top netballer of 2021, says she is still recovering "day-by-day" from the virus.
“I’m getting back into things now, and learning in real time,” she says. As one of the first netballers to fall ill, she’s been a kind of guinea pig for others returning to play in the ANZ Premiership. “As long as there are things that can help the girls in our domestic competition who are being affected this, then I’m happy.”
Sue Curran – lawn bowls
At 67, Sue Curran was the oldest athlete competing at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games. She held the honour again at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games four years later, when the lawn bowler “vowed and declared” it would be her swansong.
But guess what? At 75, she’s back for a third Games, where you can bet she’ll lead the way in seniority again.
Curran was just “too competitive” to give the game away.
Having only taken up bowls at the age of 65, the visually impaired Hamilton woman is really still in her prime.
A regular member of New Zealand’s Blind Jacks, Curran will play in the Para B2-B3 mixed pair in Birmingham, and she expects these Games will be different from her previous experience.
“We won’t be all staying together in the same village as a New Zealand team. We’ll be spread out because of Covid,” she says. “But the camaraderie will still be there regardless.”
Her build-up to these Games has been affected by the pandemic, with bowling greens closed during lockdowns.
With her sighted ‘director’ and long-time friend, Bronwyn Milne, at her side, Curran has been training four times a week on croquet lawns in Hamilton East.
“We’re using the croquet greens for strength, because the English greens are a lot harder, slower and longer than ours. New Zealand greens are so fast, it’s hard to find a surface suitable,” she says. “But we’ll be back on a bowling green in the next week or so.”
Knocking on the door of a medal (she placed fourth and fifth in the previous two Games), she swears these will be her last.
“I’d hope by the next Games, we’d have younger players coming through who are interested in competitive bowls. A lot of them are social bowlers. That’s not me, I’m afraid - I like to compete,” she says.
But there’s still the blind world championships on the Gold Coast next year to tempt her to stick around for a final end.
Ella Fotu - 3x3 Basketball
The Birkenhead Fire Station will have played its part in preparing Ella Fotu for the first New Zealand team to play 3x3 basketball at the Commonwealth Games.
A professional firefighter, Fotu works two day shifts and two night shifts each week, before turning her focus to basketball - and, in particular, Birmingham.
“I know everyone says it, but to make it there would be a dream come true," the Tall Ferns guard says. "As soon as 3x3 became a potential Comm Games sport, it really became my goal to be there. And that’s what I’ve been training for over the past year."
As part of her preparation, Fotu is playing for Mainland Pouākai in the new women’s league, Tauihi Basketball Aotearoa, which means flying between Auckland and Christchurch around her firefighting shifts.
Since becoming a fulltime firefighter last year, she's come to realise her two careers complement each other.
“There are definitely aspects of the job that cross over to basketball – building myself as a person, the teamwork and the physical things you learn from both sides,” she says.
The selection camp for the New Zealand 3x3 team is next month, and Fotu will be "trying to get as fit as I can." Because it will be a long haul - first they'll play at the 3x3 World Cup in Antwerp in June (Fotu played a crucial role in the Kiwis winning the Asian qualifier, undefeated, last month), and then the Asia Cup in Singapore in July. The Fire Service are happy to give her leave.
She’s no doubt inspired by her elder brother, Isaac Fotu, who scored the winning basket in the final of the very first 3x3 youth world champs in Bulgaria in 2011 – the first time New Zealand won a world basketball title.
Olivia Shannon and Kaitlin Cotter – Hockey
They’ve been friends and team-mates since they were 10, playing hockey in the Hawke’s Bay; now they’re flatmates in Auckland.
And Kaitlin Cotter and Olivia Shannon want to stay "joined at the hip" in the new-look Black Sticks side aiming for a repeat Commonwealth gold at the Birmingham Games.
Both strikers, Cotter and Shannon are part of the 25-strong Black Sticks squad training at the National Hockey Centre in Auckland every week.
But this week, they find themselves on opposite sides – Cotter playing for North and Shannon, South – in the annual North v South series in Hamilton, doubling as a trial for the first series of international hockey matches the Black Sticks have played since last year’s Olympics.
It’s been even longer for Cotter. She made her debut for the Black Sticks in 2020, playing two tests, but missed out on selection for Tokyo last year - when Shannon made the team.
“It was tough for her, but she was so supportive of me making the team which was a massive thing for her to do,” says Shannon. "But with us, it’s always friends before players."
There’s a good chance the two part-time students will both be in the fresh-faced Black Sticks side – who’ve lost a wealth of player experience since Tokyo, as well as coach Graham Shaw, who resigned suddenly a fortnight ago to return to Ireland.
“It would be insane to go to Birmingham,” Cotter says. “But even just keeping my place in the squad for the last two years, I've learned so much.”
Shannon, who first made the Black Sticks at 17, has gained confidence from her Olympic foray, but laments the lack of experience over the past two years, with very little international hockey for the New Zealand side.
“I’m in my fourth year in the team now, and I would normally have been at 100 caps, but I’m sitting on 35,” she says.
“It’s pretty tough knowing you’ve lost all those games because of Covid. But pretty much everyone in the world is in the same position.”
But it will all flood back now - the Black Sticks playing Australia in a few weeks’ time, before heading to Europe for three months, with the World Cup in Spain and the Netherlands, and then on to Birmingham.
Tupou Neiufi – swimming
When she couldn’t swim, Paralympic gold medallist Tupou Neiufi headed for the hills.
After winning the S8 100m backstroke title in the pool in Tokyo in August, Neiufi came out of MIQ and went straight into lockdown, when swimming pools were closed.
Rather than fret, she decided to take a long break from training, using the time to unwind and finally relax after years of intensive build-up to the Paralympics.
“I only started training again a few weeks ago. So it was a big break, but totally worth it. I spent time with family, doing things I never get the chance to do, like go out on hikes and just explore,” she says.
“I’m back into it now, and it’s obviously going to be full-on again, but that’s the life of an athlete.”
Neiufi was thrilled to discover her gold medal event is included in the swimming programme at the Birmingham Games.
Although she missed last week’s national trials - instead competing at the final stop of the Para Swimming World Series in Indianapolis, she's confident she'll be there.
“It went really well, I swam some good times, so I’m hoping that’s enough to get selected,” she says.
She should also be swimming at the world championships in Budapest in June – six weeks out from Birmingham. “Personally, my aim is just the Commonwealth Games,” Neuifi says.
While she’s full-on with training and competing now, Neuifi is looking to study next year, but she’s torn between nursing or physiotherapy. Whatever route she chooses, the 20-year-old insists it will run parallel to continuing her course in the pool.
