Northland's Andrew Priest setting pace at World Waka Ama Championships

Andrew Priest will set the pace for his team during racing against the world's best paddlers. Photo/ Maori Television

Next month Andrew Priest dons the silver fern and represents New Zealand at the World sprint waka ama championships in Tahiti. Priest's debut on the international sporting stage is a testament to 44-year-old's courage and determination. The former Whangārei policeman talks to reporter Kristin Edge about a motorbike crash that left him unable to walk, about his journey into the sport of waka ama and his hopes ahead of competing against the best in the world.

Andrew Priest is lucky to be alive.

After crashing off his motorbike 5km from Dargaville in 2010 on the way to martial arts training he lay seriously injured down a roadside bank.

His back was broken in two places both lungs were punctured, ribs were fractured as was his collar bone and shoulder blade, and he suffered a ruptured spleen.

"I woke up and knew straight away something was wrong. I couldn't feel my legs," Priest recalls.

A motorist he had passed on the road thought it was odd he could not see the motorbike rider ahead of him as he rounded the corner and looked along the straight. He turned around to a point where he had thought he had seen a puff of dust.

The observant motorist found the seriously injured Priest and called for an ambulance.

Priest was rushed to the emergency department at Whangārei Hospital where surgeons were called in and operated to stop internal bleeding.

Overnight they gave him a 50/50 chance of surviving.

Andrew Priest's debut on the international sporting stage is a testament to 44-year-old's courage and determination.

"It was a close-run thing," Priest says, now aged 44. He spent three weeks in the intensive care unit.

It was followed by five months of rehabilitation in the spinal unit in Otara, a period he describes as tough.

He returned home in a wheelchair, a paraplegic with no feeling from the waist down.

His wife Kellie had found them a new single-level house. Between them they had five young children.

"I had almost no movement in my legs. Life was really difficult for those first few years."

These days he can stand and walk about 10m without support.

"Being able to get up out of the wheelchair is important."

Priest returned to work at Whangārei police station, not on the front line but preparing files in the prosecution team. It was followed by a stint at the Whangārei law courts and then back to the police for more paper work.

"It was really, really hard as I had no intentions of not being in the police. For me I was only going to have a police career."

Priest was in the police for 12 years, with eight served in Dargaville and the remainder as a sergeant in charge of a front line section then the Youth Crime Unit at the Whangārei Police Station.

It was when he was in the police he had his first taste of waka ama as some of the staff on his squad paddled for local clubs. As part of team building exercises Priest had paddled.

And it was through people he and Kellie knew at Parihaka Waka Ama Club in 2017 that he started to paddle as a para athlete.

Club members pushed to form an adaptive team to race at the New Zealand national waka ama champs at Lake Karapiro. But he was also called into the established master mens team The Pirates where the team members recognised his talent and put him in the pressure seat at the front of the waka.

Andrew Priest is going to waka ama sprint world championships in Tahiti. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Sitting at seat 1 Priest is crucial in setting up the stoke cadence for the other five team members behind him and when it comes to the turns and clearing the turning markers.

"Waka has been good. Once I'm in the waka there's not much difference between me and anyone else. It's mostly upper body."

A successful trial earlier this year saw him selected to paddle for New Zealand in Tahiti next month. Selection has meant a number of training camps up and down the country with the last one this weekend in Rotorua. He has cemented his position at seat one.

Before the crash, martial arts and cycling were a big part of his life; now it has become waka ama.

"That's the big thing when you have an accident like this, you lose a number of things a career, sports and a million other things you don't realise until you are unable to do them."

His philosophy is if you are involved in sport you have to give back so a way he feels he can do that is as the newly elected club chairman.

A bonus for Priest heading off to Tahiti is he will have wife Kellie for support as she qualified with her Parihaka club team to compete in Tahiti. The couple plan to spend about 10 days after racing in Tahiti to enjoy the sun.

He hopes his team, made up of people with limb amputations or who are visually impaired, will make it on to the podium as reward for the commitment to intensive training.

"Ultimately we would want to medal but it's been a huge thing for me win or lose. It's my first time in a New Zealand team and first time to Tahiti, whatever happens it's going to be a ball."

He was thankful for support from sponsors Strongarm and Tai Paddles who have helped out with equipment.

It seems Priest has caught the waka bug and he is already eyeing a spot in the team for the World Champs World Distance Championships on the Sunshine Coast next year.

*Wally Noble, also from Whangārei, is also representing the NZ para athlete team in Tahiti.