With just four months to go until the world championships in Singapore this August, New Zealand’s Waka Ama Elites are intensifying preparations. Taheke Marae on Lake Rotoiti has become the training ground for the premiere men’s and women’s teams, with athletes pushing through challenging conditions to sharpen their skills for the world stage.
The focus on the build-up has been on both performance and connection, according to the coaches.
“Five years of being the men’s coach and you know each year presents its challenges but this year my goal was to make sure that All of our top New Zealand paddlers put their hand up to be available for selection this year and I believe I achieved that this year which is a massive step towards building the best team that we can for Singapore,” says Tupuria King, Men’s premiere team coach.
“So the thing that I’ve really tried to improve on this year because we’re a lot of paddlers coming from different parts of New Zealand different motu so bringing paddlers together as much as possible and this year I’ve made a bit more effort to make our camps, a bit more little bit longer try and come to beautiful locations like this where it makes training for the boys just that much easier, you know, we can just wake up. walk out and train and I think the more time we spend together too,” says Tupuria.
“I think it’s really cool to have our older experience paddlers like myself older now with the younger generation because you know it helps to pass on our experience to those younger ones. But also those young ones bring something that maybe the older ones have kinda forgotten which is that young determination like just hungry just go for it.”
For the Premiere NZ Women’s team coach Seida Tureia, spoke of the unique challenge of training in winter conditions and honoring the foundations laid by her predecessor, Kiwi Takao-Campbell.
“It’s really cold and we’re always working through winter when it comes to sprints. One of the only countries that do. So we have to continue to make sure that these camps go ahead as best as possible. We’ve had a lot of challenges lately in terms of whether events and other crises and we have to try and be resilient and get around them and make sure that they happen,” says Tureia.
“Kiwi formed the basis of elite she was the first coach since its inception and I was grateful enough to be a part of the team at that time and having now steps into the position I feel it only right to continue to honour the things that she has begun which is number one probably the level and expectation of their elite women’s was set by her. The bar is really high for us and we’re honoured to be able to try and keep that up,” she says.
Tureia is also focused on shaping the future of the elite space, stating, “I look at my time within this role is just a time to kind of put my own stamp on their elits and try my best to push forward with the big picture that we have. and driving our space into the elect space.”
With teams coming together from across the motu and pushing through tough conditions, there is still plenty of work ahead, but the teams are focused on making the most of the final four months before they compete at the world championships in Singapore.