A Te Rarawa woman who has taken on - and beaten - some of the country's fittest athletes in the gruelling sport of crossfit has now thrown her hat into the ring in the discipline of Olympic lifting.
Puawai Munro-Halkyard has been training hard as she prepares to add anotherchallenging sport to her resume, Olympic lifting, which includes the two Olympic-styled forms of weight lifting, the snatch and the clean-and-jerk. So far, her personal best in the snatch is 80kg and 95kg in the clean and jerk.
The Auckland-based Munro-Halkyard is widely regarded as one of the country's most talented women's crossfit competitors. Her most recent result of note was first place in the Industrial Athletic Invitational Challenge at the New Zealand Fitness Expo, a two-day competition which attracted the country's top-ranked crossfit competitors earlier this year.
The 27-year-old currently works only 20 hours a week in order to stay on top of her game through a demanding training regime.
Her next focus is now on representing her iwi at several upcoming crossfit competitions, including the Wellington Cup in Wellington next week, and the Battle of the Fittest, regarded as New Zealand's major individual crossfit championship, which is scheduled for November.
She is also preparing to make her competitive Olympic lifting debut at the New Zealand national championships in Auckland in October where she expects to feature in either the 63kg or 69kg weight class.
"Just one goal: I want to win the nationals. Don't really know or care where I'm ranked, I just want to win."
