Waikato’s golden glow
Is it something in the Waikato water, or is there something bigger at play?
With a golden Commonwealth Games afterglow, the region’s sporting success seems more than just a flash in the pan.
This month’s event on the Gold Coast marked New Zealand’s second-best Games effort in terms of gold medals (15), and greatest away from home.
And it was Waikato athletes who led, claiming the most golds of any region in the country.
Along with squash player Joelle King, who won two, mountain biker Sam Gaze, hammer thrower Julia Ratcliffe and boxer David
Nyika also triumphed, and that’s not counting Sam Webster and the men’s track cycling sprint team, now based at the Avantidrome in Cambridge.
It’s the sort of performance that validates the notion that the region is becoming a centre of highperformance excellence, with Sport Waikato chief executive officer Matthew Cooper seeing that as a key driver for these recent results.
‘‘This is now one of, if not the largest, high-performance sporting hubs in New Zealand with the evolution of Lake Karapiro, the Avantidrome, Triathlon New Zealand coming to town, Canoe Racing New Zealand coming to the Waikato,’’ Cooper said.
‘‘And that’s coming through, in not just those core sports, but it’s probably set a lot of the other sports into being very strongly focused around high performance sport.’’
Cooper said with the influx of High Performance Sport New Zealand staff from Auckland, there was a spinoff from that in terms of athlete arrival too.
‘‘Out of the 350-plus High Performance Sport New Zealand athletes, over 50 per cent of them come from the Waikato now,’’ he said.
‘‘I think it’s become a really attractive place for potential outstanding young athletes to think about: getting close to High Performance Sport New Zealand staff, where’s the best place to ply your trade, where’s the best place to work hard.
And from a geography point of view Waikato is now becoming a pretty impressive place to settle and train and become an athlete.’’
Even aside from the recent developments in the high-performance sphere, Cooper felt the region also just seemed to breed athletes with a sort of burning desire required at the top level – something he experienced first-hand in his rugbyplaying days.
‘‘There’s always been a real fierce determination from Waikato athletes, and I’ve noticed that since I arrived here in 1990,’’ he said.
That may have even been evident in the Gold Coast wins.
While Nyika went back-to-back from his victory in Glasgow, he had to overcome the adversity of training in car parks after parting with his coach.
The other three had to push themselves one or two places better, with Gaze and Ratcliffe both having had to settle for silver in 2014, and King bronze.
A nationwide Pathway to Podium programme – run by Sport New Zealand, High Performance Sport New Zealand and which Sport Waikato managed locally before responsibility was handed to national sporting bodies – has been a way of future-proofing results by giving pre-carded athletes extra experience.
But Cooper said the work several of the region’s secondary schools were doing in running significant programmes for development and strength and conditioning was also a key factor, and that there was nothing like success breeding success, with Sport Waikato’s current big strategy called Moving Waikato 2025, which contains an element focusing on highperformance sport.
‘‘We have an aspirational focus for trying to promote through key role models like Julia, like Joelle, David, and Sam,’’ Cooper said.
‘‘They certainly help out, they’re always very willing to promote their sport and promote themselves in our community sports base, and we’re always delighted to work with those athletes.’’