Waddell win sets tone of triumphs

An honours student with a dicky ticker was the best surprise of the Kiwi sports year.

After waking uncharacteristically at 6 am on a nippy August Sunday, I turned on the radio to find out whether New Zealand had finally won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.

The games were way down in the bulletin. Rob Waddell's historic win in the single sculls at the world rowing championships in Cologne rightly led the news.

The Waikato University student, who had overcome heart problems and had paid his own way around the world, did what no other New Zealand rower had done. Yet the night before, few people would have noticed that he'd even made the final.

It was the tone of 1998. The minnows in New Zealand's sporting pond finally got the recognition they deserved.

For once, they didn't slide into the shadow of the All Blacks, for whom 1998 will go down as the season they would have wanted to swim anonymously at the murky bottom of the lake.

It was the year when Waddell, Liddell, McIntosh and Kendall, Tait, Ulmer, Hutchings, Cootes, McGuire and Lane were among the names splashing at the top.

Yet you cannot forget 98 as the year the All Blacks lost five tests in a row, when the country came close to an emotional breakdown over it, Michael Jones got dropped and John Hart survived an inquisition into his coaching abilities.

But it was also the year that the All Whites (or whatever they're politically correct name is now) upset the Socceroos, the Tall Blacks outpointed some of basketball's bigger boys, and the Kiwis broke a jinx in England - in the wake of a dismal Warriors' season.

It was the Year of the Horse, at least for New Zealanders abroad. The Kiwi three-day equestrian team outjumped almost everyone in Rome, and double world champion Blyth Tait and his collection of equine talent couldn't put a hoof wrong wherever they rode. Pacer Christian Cullen won the Miracle Mile by about a mile and Jezabeel became the darling of the Melbourne Cup.

The Commonwealth Games were saved from red-faces by the rugby sevens and the track cyclists. But the most memorable image from Kuala Lumpur was the bear-like Darren Liddell squeezing his tiny mum while clutching his three golds.

To round the year off, David Tua finally earned himself a jab at a REAL world heavyweight boxing title.

Oh, around the world, there was some sport too. In baseball, where it's okay to take steroids, Mark McGwire's home-run record gave Americans something else to think about than Bill Clinton's cigars.

Paris threw the party of the year to celebrate France's World Cup soccer victory, and still no one knows what really was wrong with Brazilian legend Ronaldo on finals day.

Yep, it was a pretty good year for the Kiwis. But the accidental deaths of All Black Aaron Hopa and trans-Atlantic rowing hero Phil Stubbs in the final month of the year were sobering in 12 months which delivered so much to be glad about.
- Suzanne McFadden, sports reporter

Pictured: Rob Waddell with his world rowing champs gold medal.