Multi-talented teen making a splash

For most people, a gruelling national whitewater kayaking selection trial would fill a weekend quite nicely. Olivia Meehan isn't most people.
The 17-year-old capped a superb weekend on Sunday afternoon when she won thefirst of two selection trialsfor the New Zealand under-18 whitewater slalom team that will race at next year's junior world championships.
Hours earlier, she'd helped her Tauranga Girls' College road-running team to a national title at the secondary school athletics championships in Hamilton, leading her schoolmates home as the seventh-placed individual.
Teammates Alison Marshall and Fiona Berry were 13th and 20th respectively.
As girls' college running coach Rosemary Wright pointed out, without Meehan the three-person team would not have won.
"The commitment she showed was just tremendous," Wright said.
But Meehan, who had to get up at 5am on Sunday morning to drive across to Hamilton after a hard practise day on the Wairoa River on Saturday, knew she couldn't leave Wright hanging.
"She said I didn't have to go but I've been running for a while with that team so I didn't want to let them down!" she said.
Meehan's kayaking success in the Trustpower-sponsored selection race was secured when main rival Sarah-Jane Luoni (Gore) missed a gate near the top of her second run and earned a 50sec time penalty.
Meehan finished with a total time of 255.55secs, including 6secs worth of penalties for touching gates, while fellow Tauranga paddler Abby Dawson was third behind Wairarapa's Yvette Crispin.
The second and final selection race in on the Mangahou River in Manawatu this weekend, with the national teams named straight afterwards.
Other Tauranga paddlers are firmly in the box seat. Meehan's brother Jared overcame the pain of a dislocated shoulder to post the fastest time of the day in his second run - a clear 84.14sec - to pip Johan Roozenberg in the elite men's race by seven hundredths of a second overall.
Roozenberg finished on 174.47secs after two clear runs, while Tauranga Boys' paddling star Mike Dawson was third after picking up a time penalty in his second run.
Dawson, who won the Bill Ross Memorial slalom event on Saturday, led after the first run but was unsettled starting his second run, clipping an early gate and losing his rhythm.
But he's in a prime position to secure his first national senior team spot after finishing more than six seconds ahead of fourth-placed Aaron Osborne (Napier).
There was also drama in the junior men's race, when Alexandra's Sam Murray missed a gate while leading on his second run, allowing Tauranga's Andrew Robinson and Bryden Nicholas into first and second respectively.
The pair, along with Mike Dawson and Olivia Meehan, are heading to Australia next month for the Youth Olympics and Australian junior titles.
For Meehan, who also stars in triathlon and multisporting events, the biggest challenge is what sport to direct her prodigious talents into.
"It's pretty hard deciding what I'm going to do but I'm pretty keen on the kayaking. I might have to give that a good go."