Malone locked out
Can someone help Liam Malone out when it comes to his car? The Paralympics star, who won two gold medals and a silver in Rio, had car issues on his return to New Zealand as his wheels broke down between media appearances. This time, Malone has gone ahead and locked his keys in his car, and resorted to the trusty coat hanger to attempt to get into his vehicle. ‘‘Classic Malone car troubles,’’ he tweeted. ‘‘I’ve locked my keys in the car.’’ The student has had quite the reminder of what the real world is like on his return. The universe sends things like this in threes. What will be next for Malone and his car? Hamilton accountant Malesa McNearney was back to the reality of ’’sitting in front of a screen’’ this week, working her way down from her new-scaled heights in her ‘‘hobby’’ of triathlon, after an agegroup title at the world champs in Mexico.
McNearney won the female 25-29 age-group sprint distance race in Cozumel this month, capping a speedy rise to the top after only being in the sport a couple of years. It follows her fifthplace finish in the same event in Chicago last year.
The 25-year-old, who grew up in Te Puke and moved to Hamilton in 2009 to study, tried out the sport with a 3-9-3 race about five years ago, but injuries, sickness and study put her off it, until a couple of years ago she got into running.
With the encouragement of her partner Jai Davies-Campbell - who actually won the men’s 20-24 age group title in Chicago last year and has now gone into the half ironman distance - McNearney got into sprint distance, which is half a standard race and involves a 750m swim, 20km bike and 5km run.
After going to Chicago last year with no real expectations, McNearney was delighted to finish fifth, though that meant bigger aspirations for this time round.
‘‘I put more pressure on myself this year, because I wanted to podium,’’ she said.
And do that she did. While it’s tough to compare courses and conditions, McNearney did manage to cut around a minute off each of her disciplines. The plus30-degree heat was ’’a shock to the system’’, and she said the extra saving (these trips are all selffunded) to spend a couple of weeks over there acclimatising, was crucial, with this right at the start of the Kiwi season.
The race itself wasn’t exactly easy-going for McNearney, with her swim time of 11:09 having her outside the top 10 in the field of around 70.
And with her age-group starting a little after some younger groups, it then made it tricky to know where she stood.
McNearney biked in a bunch, and working well with fellow Kiwi Katherine Reardon in the draftlegal race made it that much easier. The pair knew each other, though hadn’t planned anything prior.
But during the whole ride, McNearney feared they weren’t in the leading bunch, with the younger age-groupers ahead painting a false picture.
‘‘I was worried, because I could see girls in front of me,’’ she said.
‘‘I was like ‘oh my gosh, I must be down’.’’ Then came the run. ‘‘It was pretty much: pace yourself, go out easy, not too hard, it was ridiculously hot,’’ McNearney said.
‘‘I had no idea what pace I was running. I don’t wear a watch when I race, I go totally by how I feel. So if I feel like crap then I slow down, if I feel good then I keep going.’’
Luckily McNearney did feel good. And though she kept passing others, the only way for her to tell whether they were in her agegroup was by looking at the number painted on their leg, which made for plenty of head twists as she chugged on by.
McNearney’s run was clocked at 19:09 and turned out to be the quickest in the field, with her leading the whole way. But even when she went across the finish line, McNearney had no way of telling if she’d won. ‘‘I was absolutely iffy,’’ she said. ‘‘Even when I had finished I was like ‘I must have been so far down’.’’
After a few hours in ice baths and catching up with people, McNearney was finally able to learn her fate, when the results got pinned up on a board close by the course.
It presents chaotic scenes, with a mad scramble of athletes seeking a peek, so McNearney thought she’d wait for the crowd to disperse somewhat.
An eager fellow Kiwi competitor actually did the job for her and broke McNearney the good news.
‘‘I was like ‘nah, take a photo, I want the photo evidence’,’’ she said. ‘‘He showed me and I was like ‘Oh, oh sweet, I got first’.’’
McNearney said winning a world title was a ’’pretty cool’’ feeling. Half a beer hit the spot in celebration, before she went back out and cheered on other Kiwis among the 3500 or so competing.
McNearney spent another week over there to wind down, before jetting back to New Zealand last weekend and resuming her fulltime gig. She doesn’t have goals to turn professional, as it’s expensive to do so, and she likes her job.
However, McNearney said the next challenge for her would be to move to the standard distance.
‘‘But I want to improve my times before I try and do anything longer,’’ she said.
McNearney openly admits cycling is her least favourite discipline, but she puts a pretty equal amount of time into each of the three.
‘‘Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays are my running days,’’ said McNearnery, who also trains in the company of fellow Hamilton City Hawks club members. ’’And every other day is a cycle day, or might be a recovery day - you have a day off somewhere in between - and when you’re not running I’ll swim in the morning or at lunchtimes, my boss is pretty good.’’
By attaining a podium finish, McNearney automatically qualifies for next year’s world champs in the Netherlands. And because she’s going to go all that way, she thinks it might be worth having a crack at both distances, with probably a couple of days between races.
To compete in the standard distance she must qualify through domestic races. But she also doesn’t want it to impact on her sprint distance chances. ‘‘We’ll wait and see,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t want to go back and be worse. I want to finish on a high.’’