Worth a hall of fame
WHAT was supposed to be a routine trip to the MCG for the Boxing Day Test between Australia and New Zealand turned out to be a day to remember for the Brown family.
On Sunday at North Cronulla beach, Harriet Brown completed one of the more memorable wins of her career, navigating pounding swell to win Round 5 of the NutriGrain series and finish her season on a high.
It comes mere months after the former series winner overcame a high level separation and torn ligaments between her big and second toe that forced her out of the majority of last summer.
And while the memory of crossing the line first at Cronulla will be hard to beat, a chance trip to the cricket over Christmas may just take the cake for the Geelong product.
“For Christmas, dad wanted us to go to the cricket as a family and we were walking through the halls and then saw I’d been put up in the Victorian Sporting Hall of Fame,” she said. “It was pretty cool to see that. I don’t know if dad will be more proud of me winning today or seeing my picture framed at the MCG.”
The memorable victory did away with Brown’s remaining reservations after she received a Nutri-Grain series wildcard at the start of the summer.
“I was quite lucky I got the wildcard because I wouldn’t have been physically fit to trial,” she said. “I wanted to prove that I deserved it and deserved to be in the series.”
The 29-year-old carefully navigated the first two races of the “Survival” format before moving into the lead pack during the board leg of the final race and catching a wave into shore while her competitors languished beyond the break.
“The first thing I thought was that I’d won but then there was a bit of surf out there so I wasn’t sure if anyone had come in to the left or right of me so I started thinking maybe I hadn’t won,” she said.
Brown’s win caps off a top season for BMD Northcliffe which had three of its eight competitors, Georgia Miller, Brown and Danielle McKenzie, finish in the top five of the overall final series standings.
“It’s been a really great year for the club and I love turning up at training alongside these girls,” Brown said. “Floody (Naomi Flood) is a fantastic coach and has to deal with varying excitement and disappointment after each round but we’re lucky to have her.”