This year provided further evidence, if any were needed, that New Zealand’s reputation for punching above its weight in international sport is increasingly sustained by our female athletes. At the Paris Olympics, women won eight of New Zealand’s 10 gold medals – our highest ever tally.
In fairness, the men did double their haul from the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games, at which women won six golds, courtesy of kayaker Finn Butcher and high jumper Hamish Kerr. The latter was the first-ever Kiwi to win the Olympic high jump and the first to win a gold medal in track and field since John Walker in the 1500m at the 1976 Montreal Games.
Otherwise, the Parisian gold rush was women’s work, with Dame Lisa Carrington, once again, first among equals. The International Olympic Committee denied her the chance to join the select group of six athletes to have won the same event at four successive games by axing the K1-200 from the schedule, so Carrington simply diversified: along with repeat victories in the K1-500 and K2-500 (this time with Alicia Hoskin as partner) she teamed up with Olivia Brett, Hoskin and Tara Vaughan to win the K4-500.
That took her career gold medal tally to eight – matching Jamaican sprint phenomenon Usain Bolt – and surely cemented her standing as our greatest-ever Olympian.
Cyclist Ellesse Andrews became the first woman to win both the keirin and sprint and also collected a silver medal in the team sprint. She, too, is assembling an impressive medal collection, having won silver in Tokyo and three golds and a silver at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
Lydia Ko’s comeback from what looked like a textbook case of ‘early success, early burn-out’ syndrome is as commendable as any of her many accomplishments.
Golfer Lydia Ko secured the full set, having won silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and bronze in Tokyo. More significantly, her victory qualified her for the LPGA Hall of Fame, a feat so difficult to achieve that a Golf Digest columnist speculated “it is quite possible that no one else may qualify” under the existing criteria. (In a nutshell, you have to win an awful lot of tournaments and women’s golf is getting more competitive by the year.)
Far from resting on her laurels, a fortnight later Ko won the British Open – her third major championship. It’s hard to believe that in early 2022 she was languishing at 55th in the world rankings. Her comeback from what looked like a textbook case of “early success, early burn-out” syndrome is as commendable as any of her many accomplishments.
Rowers Brooke Francis and Lucy Spoors won silver medals in Tokyo – in different boats – then took time out to have babies before teaming up to win the double sculls in Paris. Erika Fairweather deserves an honourable mention for becoming the first New Zealand swimmer to make four finals at a single games.
Déjà vu all over again
The Black Ferns Sevens team, led by the indomitable Sarah Hirini, repeated their Tokyo success, providing the high point in what was otherwise a less-than-stellar year for rugby teams in black. For the All Blacks, despite the long-desired installation of Scott Robertson as coach, 2024 was a case of “déjà vu all over again,” one of many memorable sayings attributed to legendary baseball player and manager Yogi Berra.
Frustratingly, particularly for those convinced that Ian Foster’s replacement by Robertson would transform the All Blacks overnight, the same old shortcomings were all too apparent: inaccuracy, indiscipline, general fecklessness. After Robertson’s first year in charge, the All Blacks are scarcely any closer to being the dominant team of folklore than they have been for nearly a decade.
On the subject of football codes, normal service was resumed at Mt Smart Stadium with the Warriors’-fourth place finish in 2023 proving another of the false dawns that break roughly once a decade. In one respect, however, the club inspires seething envy at New Zealand Rugby headquarters: every Warriors home game was sold out, which is believed to be a first for an Australasian sporting franchise.
Envious eyes will also have been cast on Auckland FC, the new football club backed by not one but two billionaires: American Bill Foley and toy magnate Anna Mowbray. The players have thus far provided a decent return on investment by winning their first six matches by press time – an A League record.
Anna Grimaldi displayed impressive resilience to win our only gold at the Paris Paralympics. After failing to medal in her favoured long jump event she won in Tokyo, she bounced back to win the T47 200m.
Against all odds
Tennis player Lulu Sun is nothing if not a citizen of the world: born in Te Anau to a Chinese mother and Croatian father, she grew up in China and Switzerland and went to university in the US. Having committed to representing this country, she became the first New Zealand singles player to reach the Wimbledon quarter-finals in the open era and the first to reach the knockout stage of a major tournament since 1989. In the process, she and doubles star Erin Routliffe have breathed life into a sport that, in this country, has been oxygen-deprived for decades. At the start of the year, Sun was ranked 219th in the world; she’s now 40th.
In cricket, the White Ferns became the first New Zealand team to win a T20 World Cup, adding credence to the theatrical adage that a poor dress rehearsal guarantees a bravura performance. Since underperforming at the 2023 tournament, the Ferns had lost 16 out of 21 games and went into this year’s event in the UAE on a 10-match losing streak. Those 10 losses were against Australia and England, the first- and second-ranked teams in the world. The Ferns managed to avoid both en route to victory, adding credence to the sporting adage that the luck of the draw plays a big part in deciding tournaments.
All-rounder Amelia Kerr was named player of the final and the tournament, cementing her superstar status. For Suzie Bates and Sophie Devine, two of our greatest women cricketers, a world championship trophy had been a long time coming.
Meanwhile in India, similarly low expectations – if not apprehension – swirled around the Black Caps going into their three-test series. Beforehand, the conventional wisdom was that winning a series in India was mission impossible because of the quality of the home team, appropriately sponsored by fantasy sports platform Dream11, and the challenging nature of pitches prepared/doctored to assist their world-class spinners. Further, since winning the inaugural World Test Championship in 2021, the Black Caps’ performances had encouraged the perception that the golden era was drawing to a close, rather confirmed by their capitulation at home this month against England. Yet the 3-0 sweep, surely the upset of the year, was a splendidly defiant last hurrah that will linger in the memory when most of their other achievements have been forgotten.
Finally, Team New Zealand retained the America’s Cup in a regatta staged almost as far from Aotearoa as possible. Though one can only admire Team New Zealand’s innovation and relentless pursuit of excellence, the clear-eyed decision to detach the “team” from “New Zealand” will have consequences that a cost-benefit analysis wouldn’t necessarily capture. The days when Kiwis, some of whom didn’t know a spinnaker from a tablecloth, were galvanised by an America’s Cup campaign may never return.