Triathlon: Marton's Huntley School takes home three medals from national event

Huntley School performed extremely well at last weekend's Tri NZ Suzuki Schools Triathlon, with three podium finishes. Photo / Supplied

Marton's Huntley School has punched well above its weight at the Tri NZ Suzuki Schools Triathlon in New Plymouth.

Huntley took a team of seven competitors to Taranaki last weekend, and three achieved podium finishes.

In the under-12 boys, Hugo Skerman and Toby Gill came second and third respectively.

Lucy Easton took away the bronze medal in the under-12 girls.

Huntley School deputy headmaster Gareth Wood, who has run the school's triathlon team for the past seven years, was stoked with the way his students performed.

"All of our kids finished in the top 10, so that is really impressive. These are the best kids in the country. It was great to test themselves."

In the under-12 categories, athletes complete a 200m open water swim, a 6km cycle and a 2km run to finish.

The event was up in the air for a while because of Covid-19 concerns, but the school had six weeks' notice to prepare and plan.

"They have had a pretty disruptive season," Wood said.

"But they have been training hard when they heard this was going to go ahead. It has been awesome to see the hard work come to fruition."

Wood said the team competition, an event the school was usually very strong in, was canned because of time constraints involved with running the event under Covid-19 restrictions.

He was very happy that the individual results stacked up as well as they did.

Another highlight for the students was getting to meet Olympic bronze medallist Hayden Wilde.

"He got out his medal which was pretty cool. He was a really lovely guy, so that was a real highlight for the kids."

Wood said triathlon would now take a bit of a backseat, with students focusing on cycling and other winter sports before preparing for the triathlon season again in Term 4.

"The big thing for us as a school is it is really rewarding seeing these kids work towards something. They are only 12 and 13 and they are putting in the hard yards. For them to perform like that on the day is incredibly rewarding."