These were the moments, New Zealand
It was 1990, and the nation stopped. In school, they wheeled a big old box TV into the corner of our classroom. We watched as, time and again, God Defend New Zealand rang out from the podium of the Auckland Commonwealth Games. 17 golds, 58 medals in total – we’ve never again come close to that tally.
At age 14, gymnast Nikki Jenkins vaulted into the record books, our youngest gold medallist to this day.
I was 15. Her achievement caused me to question what I had done with my life . . .
This year’s Gold Coast Games will not deliver us so bountiful a medal haul as Auckland, but they showed us something else: how much we continue to mature as a sporting people.
Many of the moments we celebrated this month were not wins on the medal table, but triumphs of human spirit. And with the odd exception (err, cough, Sam Gaze) our athletes’ performance was characterised by grace and generosity, win or lose.
Think of 18-year-old Olivia McTaggart (another former gymnast) laughingly handspringing over the mattress after abandoning her final pole vault attempt. Or F46 javelin silver medallist Holly Robinson’s warm encouragement of the young Vanuatu athlete Marcelline Moli, who was utterly over-awed on the world stage yet put her amputation and nervousness aside to throw 16 metres. It wasn’t close to Robinson’s 43.32 metres – but the camaraderie between the five competitors in that event reminded us why these are called the Friendly Games.
Our senior athletes on the Gold Coast – Dame Valerie Adams, Eliza McCartney, Tom Walsh, Sophie Pascoe, Hamish Bond and others – have acted as mentors to younger competitors. And those who wore the black singlet in the past have been their inspirations.
It was 28 years ago that Jenkins won gold in the vault.
Last week, young Cantabrian Stella Ashcroft almost face-planted off the same apparatus, snapping her neck back alarmingly. She injured her knee – but she persevered. ‘‘I was pretty shocked,’’ she tells me, ‘‘but I got back up and finished the competition.’’
Stella was born 12 years after Jenkins’ gold – but it is the pride of those past athletes that provides such a powerful model today. She has watched videos of Jenkins and others: ‘‘It makes me want to be like them, to perform like them, to achieve what they did.’’
I ask her dad how a 15-year-old deals with disappointment and emerges with her head held high.
‘‘She’s quite strong,’’ Mike Ashcroft muses. ‘‘She hung in there to finish the competition.’’
Mike Ashcroft chokes up a bit: ‘‘She’s just built of tough stuff. I’m amazingly proud of her. It makes me emotional just thinking about it – you can tell in my voice.’’