Destination Karapiro....a large number of Tairāwhiti paddlers and supporters are making their way to the Waikato for the 35th anniversary Waka Ama Sprint Nationals on Lake Karapiro near Cambridge. This year's nationals has attracted a record 3875 participants from all across Aotearoa - a 19% growth in participation numbers from the 2024 champs.
Destination Karapiro....a large number of Tairāwhiti paddlers and supporters are making their way to the Waikato for the 35th anniversary Waka Ama Sprint Nationals on Lake Karapiro near Cambridge. This year's nationals has attracted a record 3875 participants from all across Aotearoa - a 19% growth in participation numbers from the 2024 champs.
Tairāwhiti waka ama paddlers head to Lake Karapiro from Saturday for the sport’s major annual event, the national sprint championships.
The seven-day programme for the 35th running of the event starts on Sunday morning with a powhiri at which recently deceased luminaries of the sport, including national and Tairāwhiti coachand paddler Kiwi Campbell, will be remembered.
Taitamariki (midget) team managers will meet for a race briefing at 4pm on Saturday.
Paddlers from Horouta Waka Hoe Club, Mareikura Waka Ama Club, YMP Waka Ama, Taiau Waka Ama, Tolaga Bay Surf Life Saving Club – Uawa Tiaki Tai and Adventure Wairoa will take part in races ranging in distance from 250m to 1500m, some incorporating turns.
Age groups for the sprint champs range from taitamariki (midgets, 6 to 10 years) to master 80s (80-plus).
Self Storage Gisborne Horouta master 70 crew Ko Wau to Papa are the oldest team from Tairawhiti, while Horouta paddler Katrina Wooldridge tops the bill among the individual paddlers. She will contest the master 75 women’s W1 500m.
Horouta have won the sprint champs points trophy 12 of the 13 times it has been contested.
Club chairman Walton Walker said Campbell’s influence on the club’s fortunes was still strong – in the teams she coached and the coaches she nurtured.
She coached J19 men’s team Tama Ki Te Rangi, who included her son Maia, and they had been “training the house down”, Walker said.
Kaiarahi Toa, the premier women’s crew that Campbell coached to national open women’s dominance for more than a decade, is now guided by Gaibreill Wainohu – Campbell introduced her to the club’s elite team at the age of 13.
The memory of world and national championship-winning waka ama competitor and coach Kiwi Campbell will be prevalent throughout the sprint nationals at Lake Karapiro, starting on Sunday. The death of the Horouta Waka Hoe stalwart and mother of two at just 43 in November of last year stunned the waka ama and Tairāwhiti communities. Campbell had huge success as a paddler and club and elite coach to the highest level. This photo of her featured on the front page of the Gisborne Herald in 2013 after she won the premier women's W1 500 metres final at the sprint nationals. She also won one of the regatta finale races, the premier women's 250m dash, and was presented with a special paddle (pictured). Campbell successfully defended the W1 500 title in 2014. Campbell was also a driving force behind juggernaut crew Kaiarahi Toa, the latest versions of whom will no doubt be inspired by her and feel her spiritual presence with them throughout the week.
Photo / Dave Thomas
Kaiarahi Toa are dripping with world-class talent. Wainohu is joined in the boat by 2022 world sprint champion and six-time national premier W1 500m champion Akayshia Williams and her sister Rangi-Riana Williams, world J16 V1 500m champion Hine Brooking and her cousin Kaiarahi Brooking-Haapu, and Keri Ngatoro.
“We have 29 W6 crews going, across nearly all age groups,” Walker said. “Many of them are also racing in singles. They add up to almost 200 paddlers from the club.”
Apart from Kaiarahi Toa, Horouta had high hopes for the J16 and intermediate girls’ teams trained by national elite women’s coach Sieda Tureia, Walker said.
While the overall number of golden master teams is down on previous years, Horouta will be well represented in this age group.
“We have three golden master men’s teams and three in the women’s races,” Walker said.
“Akayshia Williams leads the charge for us in the W1 (single) races. Others in contention for honours are Hine Brooking and Marnie Toloa in the J19 women, Maia Campbell in the J19 men, Riria Ata in the J16 women, Bruce Campbell and Grant Donaldson in the master men, and Kerry Johnston in the golden master women.”
Jason Reti, a member of a “famous family of paddlers” from Nga Hoe Horo Outrigger Canoe Club in Te Tai Tokerau/Northland, expressed a desire to paddle with Bruce Campbell (Kiwi’s husband) in the Woolley Kumara Masters team this year, Walker said.
Reti, whose son, Elite, paddled for Horouta in the past, will be in Woolley Kumara crews for the master men’s W6 500m, W6 1000m and W12 500m, and will race for Te Uranga o Te Ra (the North Island East Coast region) in the senior masters W1 500m.
The state of city rivers had hampered local paddlers’ training, Walker said.
When they had been able to get out, many had gone upriver on the Waimata to get away from the effects of sewage discharges.
All things considered, the build-up to this year’s sprint nationals had been a “true test of resilience” for the club.
Mareikura, the first waka ama club formed in New Zealand, have crews entered in 36 events.
They are particularly strongly represented in the intermediate and J16 women’s grades and J16 men, and have one team in each of the premier, master, senior master and golden master women’s grades.
Club chairman Billy Maxwell said the club’s golden master women’s team Hine-o-te-Moana should go well.
“Those ladies have been paddling for a long time,” he said.
Several national champions are included in the team of Raipoia Brightwell, Marianne Gillingham, Carolyn Hodgkinson, Marinna Millanta-Lowrey, Beverley Murray, Denise Tapp and Jude Ureta.
Brightwell has attended all the national sprint championships, starting with the first 35 years ago. It’s a record shared with only a few, including her husband, Matahi, a pioneer of the sport in New Zealand.
Maxwell said Raipoia Brightwell was also among the club’s best hopes for success in individual events.
Entries for individual races were picked on previous results.
“Quite a few people in there won’t have done much W1 paddling in a long time,” Maxwell said.
“This year the club turns 40. Birthday celebrations are still in the planning stages but we’re hoping to have a national event that celebrates waka ama.”
Maxwell said it would be good to have a storage facility in place at Anzac Park in time for the celebrations, and he hoped work would start in February or March.
The possibility of co-operation with rowing and kayaking users of the river also held promise.
Of the other clubs, Taiau Waka Ama have two teams competing - one in each of the premier men’s and women’s divisions.
Former Education Minister Hekia Parata and her daughters, Rakai and Mihimaraea, are in a team list posted on the Waka Ama NZ site for women’s crew Rerepuhitai.
Hekia Parata is also listed elsewhere on the site as the club chairperson.
