HARD NEWS FROM WAYNE & TINA
Team GMV takes part in the 2012 New Zealand Masters Games - Indoor Rowing.
Wayne and Tina of GMV recently journeyed to Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand to compete in the Indoor Rowing events, held on Feb. 6th, at the annual NZ Masters Games. The Games Village and venue for the rowing was the magnificent new Forsyth Barr Stadium. This is the state of the art and fully covered all purpose stadium built for the recent World Cup of Rugby in NZ. The stadium was also used for the Opening Ceremony with the parade of athletes marching behind the banners for their individual sports. It was a great honour to take part in this parade and to represent one's country.
The headline act of the Opening Ceremony was the New Zealand Army Band - stars at a recent Edinburgh Tattoo in Scotland. 6000 athletes took part with Australia providing the biggest team outside of the NZ competitors. The number of countries competing was 12 with 70 different sports being contested.
The countries included Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, India, Malaysia, New Caledonia, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, UK, USA and New Zealand.
The Masters Games concept began with the World Masters Games in Toronto, Canada, in 1985 with 8305 competitors from 61 countries. The World Masters Games in Sydney in 2009 had over 30,000 competitors.
In our own case, Tina had the misfortune to tear a hamstring about 10 days before the Games meaning a huge disappointment for Tina and Team GMV. Having done all of the hard training together with Wayne over the last 8 months, it was a gut wrenching experience for Tina to have to drop out. Accordingly she put all of her energy into coaching Wayne in his 4 events, such that her voice was almost "gone" at the end of the day!
Thanks in large part to Tina's coaching, it was 4 Gold Medals for Wayne in his events, which he competed in this order - 2000m, 1000m, 500m and 300m. Wayne's times resulted in 3 season’s best times from the 4 starts. His "best unofficial result" was a second place finish, 0.8 second behind the Heavyweight class winner in the 65-69 age group in the 300m race. All 7 of the 65-69 rowers competed together as a group in each race, being 2 lightweights in their section and the 5 heavyweights in the other section.
It was pleasing to see such a large, enthusiastic and vocal crowd witnessing each race throughout the day.
For the rowing buffs who are into statistics, here are Wayne's times, plus a few personal comments made after each race:
2000m 7:47.2 Pace 1:56.8 and aim pace was for 1:55.9 The 3rd 500m split slipped a bit.
1000m 3:43.6 Pace 1:51.8 and aim pace was 1:52.0
500m 1 :40.4 and aim pace was to break 1:40 At the start of this race Wayne felt a bit shaky from the previous 2 races, with this one being not long after the 1000m.
300m 54.6 sec. Pace 1:31.1 and aim pace was 1:33.0 Had 1:31.0 in our sights till the very last pull! This one was a relief being the last event of the day!
Extra motivation for Wayne was trying to beat the winning times of the quadruple winner of the 60-64 LW class, Frank Howard of NZ. He had a 1:31 in the 500m at the same games last year, and that was an amazing world class time.
Tina and Wayne will now start training for the Aussie Pan Pacific Masters Games on the Gold Coast in Queensland in early November. It will be a very tough competition as we see that they do the 3 races in reverse order to NZ, namely 500m, 1000m and then 2000m. Tina is currently recovering from having both knees operated on and cleaned out. She is tough and will bounce back stronger than ever come November.
Wayne & Tina would like to thank the following for their help and support in preparation for the NZ Games: Clarence Bass, Alan Trinh, Roger Bangay, Shirley Godkin and Dick Rossan.
Photos by Tina Gallasch.
