Good athletic genes still running strong
The daughters of renowned Nelson middle-distance runner and Olympian Toni Hodgkinson are making an impression on the national athletics scene, helping Motueka High School to three national medals.
Hodgkinson’s daughters Camryn and Riley Smart featured in all three of the medals won by Motueka High at the New Zealand Secondary School Track and Field Championships in Wellington.
Year 13 student Camryn won gold in the 400m senior girls in a personal best time of 56.44 seconds.
Less than two hours later, she was part of the Motueka 4x400m senior relay team with Izzy Neal, Joelle Post and Holly Young that won the national title in a New Zealand record time of 3 minutes 57.1 seconds.
Riley came third in the junior girls 400m with a personal best of 59.68sec, less than a second behind the winner.
Camryn’s goal is to break the senior girls 400m record of 54.92, set by her mother, who represented New Zealand at the Atlanta and Sydney Olympic Games, in 1989.
As if the gene pool wasn’t impressive enough, the girls’ father Alistair Smart was a New Zealand decathlete who ran 48.8sec over 400m.
The weather prevented Hodgkinson’s mark being threatened by her offspring, but in the highly anticipated 400m final Camryn Smart executed her race plan to perfection, focusing on the win rather than breaking records in the rain.
‘‘I felt good going into it, and knew I’d put in the hard work,’’ she said. ‘‘When I came off the last bend, I thought I might have it, and it was just a case of holding on.’’
In the same race, Neal finished fifth and Samantha Hardie from Waimea College was eighth.
In the relay, Motueka held off archrivals Wanganui Collegiate, and in the process broke the record set by the runners-up 12 months earlier.
It is the second New Zealand record the school has held in the event since 2012, and the fifth overall relay gold.
In 2015, Camryn and Neal were Year 9 runners when Motueka broke the national junior girls record.
Described as ‘‘the bolter’’ of the games for Motueka High, Riley was initially selected in the relay squad but soon did enough to warrant inclusion as an individual 400m competitor.
After surprising herself by qualifying sixth-fastest for the final, the Year 10 student claimed her first national podium place.
‘‘I was just trying to get to the semifinal, and that was all I was aiming for – from there, I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can do a PB’ or perhaps get into fifth, but I was not expecting to place or even run under 60 seconds with the weather.’’
Unlucky to miss out on a medal were the 4x400m mixed relay team, who were pipped for bronze by .03sec by Hawera High School.
Motueka High School Athletics Academy coach Tony Aikenhead said he was ‘‘immensely proud’’ of the entire team, from the relay record to Year 9 student Ariana Mudgway who, at her first national meet, set a personal best of 28.51 metres in the javelin for a fifth placing.
The school has become accustomed to athletics success at national level in recent years, thanks in large part to the academy programme run by Aikenhead.
Riley and Camryn cited the coaching and camaraderie of the academy as being key to their success.
‘‘Athletics can be a very individual sport, and so if you didn’t have that many people to train with, it would get a bit lonely,’’ Camryn said.
Riley will continue her secondary schooling at Motueka High next year, while Camryn is moving to Auckland to study for a Communications Degree at AUT, training at the Millenium Institute with new coach Russ Hoggard.