Following the Kiwi Olympic women, who won six of the seven golds in Tokyo, there's a good chance our female athletes will also dominate when the Paralympic Games competition starts on Wednesday. Suzanne McFadden looks at the NZ women to watch.
The numbers:
Of the 29 Para athletes wearing the silver fern in Tokyo, 13 are female. Of the 37 support staff, 14 are women.
Over half the team – 18 athletes to be exact – will make their Paralympic debuts in Tokyo. And many are strong medal prospects.
New Zealand will compete in six Para sports: Para swimming, Para athletics, Para cycling, Para canoe, shooting Para sport and wheelchair rugby.
It’s the first time in 13 years the Wheel Blacks will play wheelchair rugby at the Paralympics. The teams can be mixed gender, but only men made the cut for Tokyo.
Our women to watch:
Sophie Pascoe, swimming (limb deficiency, S9, SB8, SM9): Fifteen times a medallist, nine times a gold medallist - Pascoe has had an incredible Paralympic career. But could this, her fourth Games, be her best? At each of the past three Paralympics, Pascoe has won three gold medals – but if she's on-song, could she win four golds from her five events this time? She’s been given the special honour of Hāpai Kara (team leader) for these games. But Pascoe will miss her coach of the past 20 years, Roly Crichton, who’s been in hospital in Christchurch.
Her first event, the 100m breaststroke, is on Thursday.
Nikita Howarth, swimming (bilateral upper limb deficiency/S7, SB7, SM7)
Our youngest Paralympian – just 13 at the 2012 London Games – Howarth is back for her third Paralympics. In Rio, she won gold and bronze in the pool, then decided to try Para cycling. She set a world record on the track but had to quit after developing psoriasis. With her Paralympic dream still burning, she returned to the pool – recently setting a world record in the 100m SM7 individual medley.
Tupou Neiufi, swimming (hypertonia/S8, SB8, SM8)
Neiufi was just 15 when she swam as a late inclusion in the NZ team at the Rio Games, finishing seventh in the 100m S8 backstroke. Her decision to leave school at the start of Year 12 to focus on winning a medal in Tokyo should pay off - she's now ranked second in the world after winning silver at the 2019 world champs.
Lisa Adams, shot put and discus (cerebral palsy/F37)
Adams was "a smoker and a bad eater" when athletics coach Raylene Bates spotted her in a newspaper playing rugby and thought she should try throwing – like her sister, Olympic legend Dame Valerie Adams. Not long after, she broke a world record and then won gold at the 2019 world champs. Her big sister has stayed on in Japan to coach her.
Danielle Aitchison, sprinter (cerebral palsy/T36)
Born with very little hearing, Aitchison struggled with team sports as a kid, but then found she had talent in track and field. With no long jump in her classification, the first-time Paralympian has focused on the sprint distances for Tokyo, and will be a medal prospect having won silver in the 200m at the 2019 world champs.
Caitlin Dore, shot put (cerebral palsy/F37)
These are the second Paralympics for Dore, but this time she’s in a new event. She was seventh in Rio in the javelin, but has switched to shot put, training in Christchurch with Olympic shot put bronze medallists Valerie Adams and Tom Walsh.
Anna Grimaldi, long jump (limb deficiency/T47)
After winning gold in the long jump – with a personal best in her final jump - at the Rio Paralympics, Grimaldi was sidelined for two years with a foot injury. Now leaping almost 30cm further than her gold medal jump, she's in good form to repeat her shock Rio feat.
Holly Robinson, javelin (limb deficiency/F46)
The flagbearer for NZ at the Rio Paralympics, javelin thrower Robinson is competing at her third Games. She’ll be looking to go one better than the silver she won in Rio and at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Robinson also picked up an historic silver at this year’s national track and field championships – as the first Para athlete to win a medal in an open event.
Anna Steven, sprinter (limb deficiency/T64)
After losing her leg following cancer treatment at the age of 13, Steven started running at 16, inspired by Kiwi blade runner Liam Malone at the Rio Paralympics. She made the final of the 200m at the 2019 world champs and set an Oceania record in the 100m.
Sarah Ellington, cycling (spinal cord injury/C2)
After falling from an apple tree in 2015, and being told she'd never walk again, Ellington has proved how tenacious she is, getting back on a bike with incomplete paraplegia. She made her international Para cycling debut in 2017 and has won three world championship medals on the track and road. She will ride both in Tokyo, starting with the individual pursuit on the track on Wednesday.
Eltje Malzbender, cycling (traumatic brain injury, hypertonia/T1)
Malzbender will become New Zealand’s first female Paralympic trike cyclist in Tokyo. After a cycling accident in 2016, Malzbender suffered a traumatic brain injury and had to learn to speak and walk again. Determined to ride once more, she won two world titles at the 2019 world championships.
Nicole Murray, cycling (limb deficiency/C5)
After losing her left hand in a lawnmower accident at five, Murray has become a Waitomo cave guide and a Para cyclist. She made her international debut at the 2018 world track champs, winning silver in the individual pursuit, and followed that with bronze at last year’s world champs. Her campaign opens on Wednesday with the individual pursuit.
Anna Taylor, cycling (cauda equina, partial loss of power/C4)
Born in Taupo, Taylor became an All-American rower while on a scholarship at Oregon State University. A survivor of thyroid cancer, Taylor was back in New Zealand in 2016 when she was paralysed by a major spinal cord injury. She took up cycling on both the road and track and made her international debut at the 2019 world champs. She will also ride in the individual pursuit on Wednesday.
The team leaders:
The New Zealand team decided not to march in the opening ceremony of the Games on Tuesday night, continuing their commitment to keeping the team as safe as possible.
Over the past week, Tokyo averaged 4700 new Covid cases a day. In the past week, five athletes and 23 Paralympic team members have tested positive for Covid. Four South Pacific nations, including Samoa and Tonga, decided not to go to Tokyo because of the rapid increase of the Covid Delta variant.
Although they didn’t carry the New Zealand flag in the opening ceremony, the team appointed two Hāpai Kara – team leaders – in Sophie Pascoe and two-time Para athletics medallist William Stedman.
Cyclist Sarah Ellington is one of three athletes who join Pascoe and Stedman in a leadership group.
“Sophie and William have both excelled within their sports and are both the exemplar of our Paralympic values - courage, determination, inspiration, and equality,” says NZ chef de mission Paula Tesoriero.
The team could have no better leader in Tokyo than Tesoriero. She’s a three-time medallist at the Paralympic Games, winning a gold and two bronze medals in cycling at the Beijing 2008 Games.
In her day job, she’s also New Zealand’s Disability Rights Commissioner. And she’s managed to make both roles mesh together.
“They’re both about showcasing the talent of disabled people, growing awareness of issues impacting disabled people and advocating for inclusion. And sport is such a wonderful way of showcasing inclusion,” she told LockerRoom a year ago.
Did you know?
The Para in Paralympics stands for parallel – not paraplegic as most people think – because they are run in parallel with the Olympic Games, showing that the two movements exist side-by-side.
The New Zealand team don't like to have medal targets. But as University of Auckland professor Toni Bruce wrote in her LockerRoom column, Paralympians have won more medals than Olympians at every Summer Games since 1992. Even in 2016, with an Olympic medal haul of 18, Paralympians still came out on top, winning 21.
So if this trajectory continues, the Kiwi Paralympians could top the Olympians’ highest haul of 20 in Tokyo.
How to watch?
Well, obviously you can’t go there, even if you’re a local. Organisers have ramped up the safety precautions from the Olympics, and banned all spectators – except, for some reason, the odd handful of school kids.
But at home, it’s free-to-air television coverage of the Paralympic Games. TVNZ DUKE (Freeview 13, Sky 23 and live streamed on TVNZ OnDemand) will show live coverage from noon till 1am, while TVNZ 1 will have a special highlights programme every morning at 9am.
