Fafeita rises from sick bed to win gold

Wairarapa College student Courtnay Fafeita literally got out of her sick bed to win a gold medal at the Down Under track and field meet on Australia's Gold Coast on Sunday.
Fafeita, 15, looked no chance of competing in the 14-15yrs girls discus event when she was rushed to hospital on Thursday evening just hours after arriving in Australia as a member of the New Zealand development squad.
Her Carterton-based coach John Quinn had travelled across the Tasman a day earlier and was "very concerned" to find Fafeita seriously weakened by a severe sore throat and headache.
"She was barely able to walk on her own, that's how weak she was," Quinn said. "It was pretty obvious we needed to get her to hospital and have all the necessary checks done, that had to be the first priority".
One of the first of those checks was actually for meningitis as apart from not having a rash Fafeita basically had all of the other symptoms for that life-threatening disease.
Happily, however, those worries were quickly put to rest by hospital staff but what has now been labelled a viral infection laid Fafeita low enough for her to be put on a drip and antibiotics almost up to the time she was allowed to return to the New Zealand team's headquarters late on Saturday afternoon.
Even then Quinn was unsure as to whether Fafeita would be able to compete in the next day's discus event, having already been withdrawn from the two other disciplines she was to contest, the shot put and hammer throw.
"Her throwing arm was so bruised from the injections she could hardly pick up her clothes off the floor when she got back to the hotel, it didn't look too good then," he said.
Even on the Sunday morning the bruised arm was still sore but with Fafeita making her willingness to be part of the discus action crystal clear to New Zealand management a decision was made to grant her wish.
"Courtnay made no bones about how she felt, she didn't have any intention of going all that way and not being part of it ," Quinn said.
As if just competing wasn't evidence enough of Fafeita's fighting qualities more was to come.
Going into her very last throw of the competition she was lying in third place and the odds against her finding something extra after the dramas of the previous three days had to be high.
But find she did, throwing the discus 38.70m at her final attempt, good enough to not only win the gold medal for her age group but further than the distance recorded by the winner of the senior women's title as well.
For coach Quinn it was an effort which typified the character of Fafeita, whose personal best for the discus currently sees her ranked sixth over the whole of New Zealand.
"She's a fighter, she doesn't know how to quit ," he said. "And she handles pressure so well, nothing seems to worry her."
Making Fafeita's effort more extraordinary if that is possible was that it came on the back of a preparation which coach Quinn freely concedes was hardly ideal.
With no all-weather athletics facility available in the Wairarapa and the weather over the past couple of weeks being so indifferent to make grass track training almost impossible little speed work of any consequence had been done.
"We knew she was still some way off peak form so we didn't quite know what to expect results-wise," Quinn said, adding that if Fafeita had been well enough to contest the shot put and hammer throw she would have been a serious medal contender there as well
Another Fafeita was also amongst a host of Wairarapa athletes to perform with distinction at the Down Under meet. Courtnay's younger brother Alex, who was competing on his own account, threw 33.70m to place third in the boys 14-15yrs javelin and 46.08m in the discus, a personal best effort for that event and enough to again earn him a third placing.
Medal winners as part of the New Zealand development squad were Michael Wilson, William Simpson and April Campbell.
Wilson was in dominant form in the senior men's sprints, placing first over 100m in an excellent time of 10.96secs considering the wet conditions and also first in the 200m in a time off 22secs flat. Wilson was also a member of the successful 4 x 100m senior men's relay squad which clocked a winning time of 43.7secs and the 4 x 400m relay team which finished in second place.
Simpson placed 20th in the 16-17yrs 100m in 11.83secs and 24th in the 200m in 24.23secs but he was part of two winning relay teams, the senior men's 4 x 100m and the 16-17yrs 4 x 100m.
Campbell was one of the youngest runners in the 14-15yrs age group and finished with a gold medal in the 4 x 100m relay and a silver medal in the 4 x 400m relay. She also registered a series of fine individual efforts & fifth in the 90m hurdles in 14.64secs, 13th in the 100m in 13secs and 14th in the 200m in 28.22secs.
Tom Quinn son of John confirmed his promise as a middle distance exponent in the 14-15yrs division, placing seventh over 800m in 2mins 23.63secs and ninth over 1500m in 4mins 50.78secs. He was also part of a fifth-placed 4 x 400m relay team in the 16-17yrs age group.
The stunning results achieved across the Tasman were by no means the end of Wairarapa's successes on the athletics front over the weekend.
Stevie Paine, who has just turned 13, made mince-meat of her rivals in the girls 14yrs and under event at the national cross country championships in Taupo, covering the 3kms in 11mins 21secs and finishing all of 19secs ahead of the second placegetter. She is, of course, a youngster sister of Vicky Paine, winner of two silver medals at the Oceania track and field championships the previous weekend.
Other notable Wairarapa performances at Taupo were the 15th placing of Molly Creagh in the 14yrs and under event in 12mins 57secs, the 29th placing of Ewan Cottle in the boys 14yrs and under race in 12mins 32secs, the 20th placing of Kurtis Paine in 8mins 28secs in the 2km boys 12yrs and under race and the sixth placing of Holly Travers in 4mins 3secs in the girls 10yrs and under event.