Inside '24, a year that cleared a high bar
From Paris to Pune, the sporting year leapt off the page (and occasionally jumped the shark). Here's to the athletes, teams and stories that wowed, PLUS: Notes from the Oval
Here it is… the biggest and brightest year-ender yet! But wait… there’s more, including a minuscule Notes from Bay Oval and a book prize winner!
NZ ATHLETES WHO WOWED ME
It’s Olympic year, so… (and with apologies to those medallists I don’t mention who were all, obviously, awesome)
Lisa Carrington
She now has 31 medals at major championships, 23 of them gold and eight of them Olympic gold. Her K1, K2 and K4 trifecta over 500m (after her favoured 200m was scrapped after Tokyo) added padding to her status as the country’s most successful Olympian and she might not be finished yet.
Ellesse Andrews
It might just be the fact that I prefer cycling over kayaking, but count me as one who thinks Andrews’ achievement in winning the sprint double (sprint and keirin) and claiming silver in the team sprint was the most impressive New Zealand performance in Paris. The way she overwhelmed her opponents in the sprint, the weaker of her two individual events, was incredible. She turned the medal races into a procession, this despite silver medallist Lea Friedrich being the faster rider.
Hamish Kerr
There is something about a New Zealander on the top of a track and field dais that stirs the emotions. Kerr’s gold had all the feels, especially the way he overcame double failures at two heights and an effective jump-off for gold with American Shelby McEwen, endearing him to a public not accustomed to seeing success in field events that don’t involve throwing metal objects. His slightly unhinged infield lap of honour was a reminder that sporting success does strange and wonderful things to humans.
Lydia Ko
She won Olympic gold, stamped her ticket for the Hall of Fame and added a major crown. As I wrote the morning after:
I barely gave pause for thought to Ko in the build-up to Paris.
That was a mistake. Clearly.
The fields in women’s golf have got deeper, stronger and more fearless. Sometimes we equate not being dominant with not being brilliant.
Ko is still brilliant. That’s the reminder I shouldn’t have needed.
Grace Nweke
Grace Nweke has almost single-handedly kept netball relevant this year. After an injury-disrupted 2023 season, the shooting star cemented her status as the world’s biggest scoring threat by leading the Ferns to three staggeringly dominant wins over Australia in the Constellation Cup series.
The 22 year-old has made the gutsy call to take her talents across the Tasman next year to play in Australia’s Super Netball competition. The decision means she will not be eligible to play for the Silver Ferns next season — a move that will almost certainly backfire for Netball NZ.
Kane Williamson (Will Young)
All Williamson did in nine tests this year was amass 1013 runs at a tick under 60, while compiling four centuries (including two in the same test for the first time) and four half centuries.
When injury ruled Williamson out of the India series, the Black Caps needed someone to be his doppelganger and they found him in Young, who won player of the series after compiling 244 runs in a bowlers’ series. Young’s subsequent dropping for the home series against England was both understandable and very, very wrong.
Wallace Sititi
Rugby might well be a service game where any one part of the equation cannot work well without several contributors, but it is still a sport in desperate need of superstars. Sititi, the 22-year-old loose forward, could become a beacon, with his ability to hit holes, break tackles and offload. His defence may require more refinement and consistency, but his talent is undeniable.
James Fisher-Harris
He did what he always does for Penrith: play a key role in another title defence. He wowed because he made the call to leave club-legend status at the foot of the Blue Mountains behind to join a club that really needs him — the ‘Mighty’ Wahs.
Chris Wood
I would be pilloried for leaving him out because he keeps scoring goals for Nottingham Forest, the most surprising team in the Premier League, and the All Whites. And even if I might not watch a lot of Forest (or the All Whites), I know enough to say, “Wow!”
TEAMS THAT CONFUSED ME
Black Caps
How do you sum up a team that beat India 3-0 in India, then came home and put down two performances against England of such noxious quality that the Basin Reserve was temporarily declared a toxic waste dump? Or a team that decided to travel to play a high-profile ICC tournament with no warm-up matches and were then surprised by how wretched they were?
Just a very strange year, where they secured their first series victory over a team that was wearing South Africa playing kit, played poorly against our nearest neighbours, got thrashed in Sri Lanka, switched captains, said goodbye to legends, offered out-of-form players casual contracts, said hello to Will O’Rourke who is possibly the most exciting talent to emerge since Williamson started using full-sized bats.
The year’s penultimate fixture saw a suitably bonkers performance (see below).
A quick note here for the White Ferns, who were not confusing. Well… were not confusing apart from the fact they won a world T20 championship in a year they also lost 18 of the 21 internationals they played, so there was that!
All Blacks
If you were in the camp who thought the Ian Foster era had thrown up too many indignities, you were no doubt optimistic that Scott Robertson would clean house and usher in a new era of excellence and relatability.
The Razor reality show was somewhat different. Once you scraped away the head coach’s outsized personality it was, like all reality TV, a bit dull.
The first season offered scope for tummy-scratching pontifications about shapes and patterns emerging, but next season it would be nice to see an All Blacks team emerge to match the identity of its coach. The win against Ireland in Dublin was the undoubted highlight, while I’m not telling anybody anything new here when I say the loss to Argentina in Wellington was a bit gross.
Oh, an assistant coach leaving the Big Brother House after just five episodes was genuinely interesting, but the absence of a Leon MacDonald exit interview lessened the drama.
NZ Warriors
After the thrill ride that was 2023, I genuinely had a smidgen of hope that 2024 might be, you know, “our year”. Even if it was a long shot, I would never have predicted 13th — an objectively poor result for the most subjectively professional sports team in the country.
Auckland FC
The club’s billionaire owner paid a pretty penny (albeit chump change for Bill Foley) for a licence to play in a league that had hit financial “ground zero” and was carrying genuine concerns about its future.
As I sit here and pen this, Auckland FC sit first on the table with seven wins and a draw from their first nine games, are drawing sell-out crowds to Mt Smart and have added to and energised Auckland’s professional sports scene in a way few would predicted.
Silver Ferns
When the Silver Ferns opened their season with a series loss to England, seeing their world ranking slip to three, it appeared confirmation that the Ferns’ decline would continue in 2024. Only a few weeks later Noeline Taurua’s side turned around and walloped the world champion Australian Diamonds by 10+ goals in three straight matches to claim the Constellation Cup. Ferns’ fans appeared as shell-shocked as the Diamonds.
Team New Zealand
They’re clearly the world’s most dominant modern America’s Cup outfit and yet I couldn’t even muster the energy to rouse myself to watch any of the races live. I’m not sure if the decision to defend the Cup offshore has stirred latent jingoism within me, but the truth is they’ve lost me. They’re clearly brilliant, but I barely care.
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