18 July, 2024

Club gets in the Games spirit as leading lights compete

Three stars… Polevaulters Eliza McCartney (left) and Imogen Ayris and shotputter Jacko Gill (above, with Takapuna Athletics Club schoolgirl shotputters Sina-Maria Su’a and Kate Hallie) will compete in Paris

Takapuna Athletics Club members are recording encouragement videos for the club’s three local Olympians and have plans for pre-dawn viewing of Games competition from Paris.
New Zealand team polevaulters Eliza McCartney and Imogen Ayris and shotputter Jacko Gill all joined the club as youngsters and are popular role models at its Onewa Domain headquarters.
The trio, who attended Takapuna Grammar School TGS), are now in Europe for the countdown to the Olympics, which begin next Friday 26 July.
Club president Dan Brady said winter training squads were getting together to record messages which he would forward.
Between stints competing overseas, Gill trains at the club regularly, encouraging up-and-coming shot putters, who also benefit from the tutelage of his father, Walter Gill. The vaulters use the facilities at the Millennium in Mairangi Bay, which was why McCartney switched clubs for a time, but last year she returned to Takapuna and joined with Ayris, who regularly helps at club nights, to launch a programme to provide gear for young athletes.
Brady expects a good turnout of club members and their families at 5am on Sunday 4 August to watch Gill compete live. “We will crank up the barbecue.”
With the pole-vaulting heats and finals falling even earlier on weekday mornings, it had been decided to focus on that one “Olympics at Onewa” gathering.
The club will also cheer on its rising 800m runner James Ford in late August, after confirmation of his selection for the World Athletics Under-20 championships in Peru.
From this summer season, Brady said Takapuna will for the first-time add pole-vaulting to its activities, with a coach already lined up to help introduce this.
“It would be stupid not to have it, with Imogen and Eliza based here.”
The cost of sourcing gear from the United States is expected to be around $30,000, and funding will need to be arranged, but Brady said old high-jump matting could be deployed initially.
Once the summer athletics season starts, Brady hopes to get all three of the Olympians to visit together for a club night.
Along with the Takapuna Athletics trio, the North Shore is home to a host of other Games competitors, including some with strong medal prospects.
Some are imports to the area, drawn to good training facilities, such as Bay of Plenty raised canoeist Lisa Carrington, who has a home in Forrest Hill and trains at Lake Pupuke.
Others went through local schools, including McCartney’s partner, kite-foiler Lukas Walton-Keim, who went to TGS.
The two Westlake high schools boast an impressive eight Games competitors.

---

Westlakes produced eight members of NZ Olympic team

Eight former Westlake boys and girls high school students and one from Carmel College are representing New Zealand at the Paris Olympics which begin next week. They are:

• Three-time Olympian, former female world sailor of the year and former world champion Jo Aleh will this year be competing in the 49er class rather than the 470. The gold and silver medal winner returns to the Games after last competing in Rio in 2016.

• Connor Bell, a discus thrower, will be making his Olympic debut. A New Zealand record holder, the 20-year-old won gold at the 2018 Youth Olympics.
• Swimmer Cameron Gray is competing in the 100m freestyle. At 20 years old, he boasts an impressive resume, having won bronze medal in the 50m butterfly at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and represented New Zealand at the World Aquatics Championships in the same year.
• Former Westlake rugby guns Moses Leo and Brady Rush are part of the sevens team heading to Paris. Leo is a North Harbour provincial player who made his national debut in Singapore two years ago, while Rush, a winger for Northland, was a key player in the 2023 side which won the world series.
• Rico Bearman, a 20-year-old professional BMX rider, was a late selection to New Zealand’s Olympic team. He has an under-23 World Series championship under his belt and a sixth place finish at his first Elite World Championship this year.
• Justina Kitchen (along with Bayswater resident and Takapuna Grammar old boy Lukas Walton-Keim) will be New Zealand’s first ever kite-foiling representative. Kitchen has won three national titles and placed highly at world events.
• Twenty-year-old Tara Vaughan will be attending her first Games after she and her national teammates Dame Lisa Carrington, Alicia Hoskin and Olivia Brett, won the Canoe Sprint World Championships K4 500m last year.
• Former Carmel College Student Nina Brown, aged, 21, and her swimming partner, Eva Morris, will be the first artistic swimming duo to represent New Zealand at the Olympics, since the Beijing Games in 2008.

Please consider supporting The Rangitoto Observer by clicking here: