Season-finish glitch leaves heptathlete Briana Stephenson fifth

NZ senior women’s heptathletes Briana Stephenson (left) and Maddie Wilson.

Former Waipukurau resident and New Zealand senior women’s heptathlete Briana Stephenson, 24, recently returned from the Oceania Athletics Championships held in Suva, Fiji.

NZ’s No 2-ranked heptathlete came away with some triumphs during her seven events, but within every sport comes the occasional moment of misfortune.

Briana flattened her very first hurdle during the first event, the 100m hurdles. As she wobbled and staggered, almost stopping, she regained her form to move up on the other athletes, beating four of them. Most would have given up and taken a DNF (did not finish), but she was determined to make something out of it — 14.75s wind -2.4, was a second off her best and meant it could be a long hard journey ahead.

She leapt to 1.76m in the high jump and then produced a heptathlon PB for her, in the shotput of 10.77m. Struggling a little with the new throwing events, this was a satisfying result.

An inflamed knee during the high jump almost resulted in her scratching from the 200m, always the last event on day one of a heptathlon. With her knee well strapped, she got an explosive start and ran a massive bend, holding off the approaching Australians, to beat everyone.

The previous Oceania hep 200m record was 24.86s. It was now Briana’s with 24.26s wind 0.4 and a wind legal season’s best, too. During season 2023-24 no one had beaten her in a 200m heptathlon race.

More misfortune started off day two. Briana’s first long jump attempt was unofficially measured at 6.10m. Unfortunately, she was barely 2-3cm over the board. This would’ve been a huge points haul. She had to be content with a more passive jump of 5.69m wind 0.9.

Everyone threw the javelin into a very strong headwind and many struggled. Briana walked away with 31.49m.

The 800m was run during very strong home-straight headwinds, but Briana sat in second place until the last 230m and launched her final attack. As in the 200m, she blitzed the entire field, winning in 2m 20.62s.

No one has beaten her in the 800m for heptathlon during this season. In fact, the gold medalist, Australian star and potential Olympian Kamryn Newton-Smith, asked Briana for advice on how to train for and run an 800m race.

Briana placed fifth with 5415 points and finishes her second season of heptathlon as NZ No 2, transtasman No 4, and Oceania No 5. Individually, she was crowned “Queen” of NZ senior women’s 100m hurdles.