Wairarapa's best chance of winning gold at the Beijing Olympics may be triathlete Emma Snowsill.
Well, it may be stretching the imagination a bit far to actually label her as being from Wairarapa but with her father, Gary, having two brothers living in Masterton in Wayne and Jack Snowsill-and having been
an old boy of West School and Wairarapa College himself before shifting to Australia's Gold Coast-we can lay at least some claim to her.
Particularly when it is noted that as a youngster she used to holiday often in Masterton and spend much of her time running around the streets of the town.
With three world triathlon championships already to her name, Snowsill is being touted as the hot favourite to win gold in Beijing in an event which will require her to swim 1.5km, cycle ride for 40km and then finish with a 10km run and, if she does, she will become the first Australian female triathlete to win Olympic gold.
That Snowsill is in the right mental and physical shape to cope well with the burdens of favouritism has been illustrated twice over the past couple of weeks.
First, after a five months break from competition, she contested a World Cup event in Mooloolaba, Australia and showed the value of an intensive training regime by beating the current world-ranked No.1 Vannessa Fernandes by 39secs, and in the process spoiled the latter's bid to rewrite the record books by scoring a 20 th World Cup series win.
Snowsill then headed to Japan for another World Cup race in Ishigaki just last weekend and there she was again in dominant form, leading from start to finish to score by 29secs from fellow Australian Erin Densham.
In her usual style the pint-sized Snowsill was always in the leading bunch in the swim, struggled a little in the cycle ride and then finished with a blistering 33min.23secs 10km run to quickly leave her rivals contesting for the minor placings.
Snowsill makes no secret of her desire to perform well in Beijing. "I have aspired to going to the Olympics from a very young age, from where I was just a swimmer," she says. "In terms of triathlon it is definitely the biggest thing that has come my way in my career and obviously I would love to go there and give it my best shot".
