“Hayden is such a great athlete that training with him was just too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Aside from the fact that he’s naturally powerful in the water, Ney’s running has been weaker than his swim as he’s suffered from shin splints for the past couple of years.
“But I really feel like I’m on the other side of that now. I’m looking forward to pushing my running and cycling. While training in Tauranga, I managed to clock up 63 kilometres of running with no pain at all, so it’s looking good.”
Ney will have a little while to build on those strengths. He turns 19 in March, which means he has the rest of the year to compete in the under-19 categories.
Meanwhile, that same month there’s another milestone to mark. To be held in Tasmania, Australia, the 2019 Triathlon Oceania Championships will be an important qualifier that will determine Ney’s event schedule for the coming months.
If he does well, he’ll be selected for the New Zealand Triathlon Elite Junior Team, catapulting him straight to the International Triathlon Union Age Group World Championships, to be held in Switzerland in late August.
“Because of that, the Oceania event is really important to me, and the Eastland Port sponsorship will help me get there,” he said.
Josiah’s ultimate goal is to stand on an Olympic podium, so his university study — which starts this year — is structured around that.
The emerging star has enrolled at the University of Waikato, but it’s not just the institution’s reputation for sports medicine and science that has attracted him.
“The Avantidrome high-performance centre is just down the road, in Cambridge, and the facilities there are so good that most of the top-achieving athletes in the country are based there.”
Ney’s open-water training will be different . . . he’ll be using nearby Lake Karapiro rather than the ocean, but he’s happy to take that in his stride.
And having both Sir Edmund Hillary and Prime Minister’s scholarships under his belt, once he’s met his academic commitments he’s free to devote around 25 hours a week to training.
“Training so much can be hard on your social life and that’s one of the reasons why I’m really looking forward to having Cambridge as a base,” he said.
“A lot of the people there will have the same focus, so we’ll all be in the same boat together.”
Eastland Port general manager Andrew Gaddum applauds Ney’s commitment to his sport, maintained in the midst of a gruelling study regimen.
“It’s obvious to us that Josiah is a well-rounded young man whose identity does not rest entirely on his sporting prowess. We’re thrilled to be supporting him in his goals.”
