Rebel Sport Christmas Trolley Dash Tauranga: Jolene Howden-Turnbull celebrates son’s inspiring cancer journey

Rebels Sport Christmas Trolley Dash winner Jolene Howden-Turnbull gets ready to race around the Tauranga store.

When Jolene Howden-Turnbull arrived for the Rebel Sport Christmas Trolley Dash Tauranga she had a game plan for how things would go.

“The plan completely went out the window,” Howden-Turnbull said.

She had 90 seconds to fill the trolley with $5000 worth of Rebel Sports merchandise, including clothing, shoes, and sports equipment.

While she was dashing around Rebel Sport Tauranga on Wednesday, four others were happening simultaneously in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin.

Her journey to the trolley dash started three years ago in 2021 when her son Isis Teaukura, then 15, was diagnosed with rare bone cancer Ewing Sarcoma.

The cancer that went into remission in February 2022, and everything looked to be in the clear.

In 2021, Teaukura hid his diagnosis and played it off as just typical teenage behaviour, Howden-Turnbull said.

“He hid it from us, saying ‘he didn’t want to be a burden,’” Howden-Turnbull, who lives in Putāruru, said.

In May this year he received an additional cancer diagnosis, but four rounds of chemotherapy later, it went into remission in October.

Howden-Turnbull saw the trolley dash on social media and entered the competition after discussing it with her son.

“I wanted everyone to hear my son’s story. He’s been through so much at such a young age, and this Trolley Dash will allow me to give him more this Christmas,” she said.

Jolene Howden-Turnbull's game plan for how she would do the trolley dash "went out of the window".

There were 25,000 other applicants to be part of the competition, Rebel Sport Tauranga’s assistant manager Amber Ellis said.

“We selected the right person,” Ellis said.

One of the only rules that Howden-Turbull and the other winners had to observe was that they could not run during the dash.

“It is for safety. We don’t want people to get hurt.”

It was a nerve-wracking experience, but having her family present helped Howden-Turnbull strategise and plan what items she would pick.

At 7.30am, the dash began with a Rebel Sport floor manager holding a stopwatch and timing her race.

“I completely went down the wrong aisle and, for some reason, thought I could not take my hands off the trolley,” Howden-Turnbull said.

The time went by in a blink of an eye and finished with her filling her trolley with clothes and shoes.

“I didn’t get everything I wanted, but I am happy with what I got,” she said.

The staff at Rebel Sport Tauranga scan the items in Howden-Turnbull's trolley.

Ellis said that after the dash finished, Rebel Sport staff tallied the items in Howden-Turnbull’s trolley.

If the trolley total was above $5000, Howden-Turnbull could pick and choose the items she would like to keep.

All up, the total was $4400 - a new record for the competition, according to Ellis.

- SunLive