Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Fitting finish a tribute to slain friend
Sarah Wikotu spent a year sweating out her grief with hard training to win the Fittest Mum Competition in honour of her murdered friend, only to be denied her podium victory through a scoring error.
Not prepared to let it slide, her best friends secretly rallied the Blenheim Crossfit community together to give Wikotu the podium finish she deserved.
On Saturday, Crossfit athletes and wha¯ nau from various different gyms in the community gathered together at CrossFit Blenheim to surprise Wikotu with a winner’s celebration.
The mum of three first took part in the Fittest Mum Competition some four years ago, and has finished on the podium each year, but the first place has eluded her.
It was at one of these competitions that she met Australian Hannah Clarke and became firm friends, subsequently travelling to Australia to compete with Clarke in the elite Torian Pro Crossfit competition.
Last year, Clarke and her three children were publicly murdered by her estranged husband, when he doused them with petrol in their vehicle and set it alight, subsequently stabbing himself to death.
Wikotu had told Clarke at the previous Fittest Mum competition that she wasn’t going to compete again.
‘‘After that (Clarke’s death), I made a bet to myself that I would go there even if it was just to represent her,’’ Wikotu said. ‘‘I was there and made sure her presence was felt.’’
Devastatingly, when the results were announced at the competition in Auckland, Wikotu was named in second place, missing the winner’s podium once again.
‘‘I was really hard on myself and had to do a little bit of selftalk that night about ‘second place is still a bloody great place’,’’ Wikotu said.
It’s her response when finding out that an error was made and that she had in fact won, which reveals the character of the woman her friends describe as the ‘‘humblest person you’ll ever meet.’’
‘‘It was a little bit of a bummer on the day, but everybody’s human,’’ she said.
‘‘Fittest Mums were really cool with how they corrected it. They contacted both of us and made sure everything was all right with everybody and the coaches before they released the result.’’
Best friend Kerrie Dick, who organised the surprise celebration, said Wikotu is ‘‘the girl that gets everybody from all the gyms together.’’
‘‘I think she just doesn’t understand how special she is to all of us and how she motivates all of us and makes us want to be driven people like her. She’s got no idea – she’s just so humble. She just does it because that’s who she is as a person.’’
‘‘She’s my best friend, and I know how much Hannah meant to her.
‘‘I know how much work she put in to get to that number one spot for her friend, and there was just no way in hell we were going to let it slide without celebrating,’’ Dick said.
Tineka Smith, who helped Dick plan the podium party, said that Wikotu had taken tragedy and turned it into her motivation.
‘‘The things that she failed on when she competed with Hannah, or struggled with – like the handstand walk – she worked on and made sure that she was the boss of those things,’’ Smith said.
Wikotu’s coach Khada Douglas, who recently moved to Blenheim from Australia, presented her with the winner’s plate, which had secretly been intercepted by her friends on its way to her.
Douglas has coached Wikotu remotely for almost 2 years and is looking forward to working with her in person.
‘‘Sarah is one of the most humble people you’ll ever meet,’’ Douglas said.
‘‘She’s a bloody good competitor and supremely hard worker, but she’ll never brag about it.’’
‘‘She’s very deserving of winning New Zealand’s fittest mum. One, for the sake of how much hard work she does, and two, she’s just an incredibly good human being as well.’’
Wikotu said she had been ‘‘a little bit swept away’’ by the tribute.