The Te Reinga Falls – Just below my Hapua training pool

According to the Swimwatch analytics report one of the most popular pages readers visit is the “About Swimwatch” page. I suspect visitors are new readers wanting to find out about the self-opinionated being that writes this stuff. The page needs updating. I will get around to it one day soon. In the meantime here is a description of how I first got involved in swimming.

Through primary school and high school I lived in the small East Coast town of Te Reinga. Te Reinga is about half way between Wairoa and Gisborne on the 100 kilometre inland road. There is not a lot at Te Reinga. There is no pub, no shop, no movies and no swimming pool. There is a marae, a school, some houses, fertile bush for hunting pigs and deer, a river and a spectacular waterfall.

In summer I played in a section of the Hangaroa River we called the hapua; a Maori word meaning lagoon. The river was quite wide, about 25 meters, and slow moving. I remember those times with great affection. We had a mud slide, a rope swing and a plank of wood we called a diving board. Occasionally we held Olympic or Commonwealth Games, racing across the river. Of course I never did any training. I didn’t even know that town kids had clubs that prepared for races by swimming every day.

When I was twelve, between primary school and high school, my parents decided we would have a two week holiday in Auckland. It was time to see the big city. I have no idea why, but my mother asked if I would like to go to a swim school and learn to swim properly. That appealed to me no end, and so I arrived at the Parnell Baths ready to swim with the Paul Kraus squad.

The first morning was a disaster. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no understanding of the hieroglyphics on the training board. All I remember was blindly following and trying to copy the guy in front of me. That was not all that easy. Goggles were yet to be invented and so even seeing what the other guys were doing became difficult as the chlorine took hold of my unaccustomed eyes.

At the end of the session I told my mother about my problems. She explained to Paul that her backward child was in need of help. That afternoon Paul patiently explained to me what the training board meant. And I was away. The two weeks were brilliant. I loved every minute. Who the hell wanted to see Queen Street when you could spend all day at the Parnell Baths?

I arrived back in Te Reinga armed with half a dozen of Paul’s training sessions determined to continue my training in the hapua. It was more difficult than in Parnell especially standing up in the mud on either side in order to turn around. Chlorine was not a problem anymore but when it rained the silt in the water could be just as annoying. However I got through the summer and went off to high school, to what was going to be my first swimming competition – the Wairoa College junior swimming championships.

And would you believe. Paul’s training worked. I won the bloody thing. Not only that I set a school record in the 33 yard breaststroke and 66 yard freestyle. See, I thought, you don’t need swimming pools and stopwatches, or training squads and coaches. The hapua on a nice day and this swimming business is easy.

But then I had a stroke of good fortune. My mother bought me a copy of Arthur Lydiard’s new book, “Run to the Top”. Instead of doing homework I sat in my room and studied every page. At the end of it I knew that I didn’t need a coach. All I needed to do was convert Lydiard’s running schedules into swimming and, in the hapua, I could swim to the top.

It took some time, and a lot more lost homework, to convert Lydiard to swimming but eventually I had a plan. I joined the Wairoa Swimming Club and for three years trained by myself on most days in the hapua. I say most days because when the river was flooded the current and silt made swimming difficult. On those days I ran whatever Lydiard schedule was the equivalent of my swimming translation.

My competitive results were modest in terms of the national champions I have coached but from a river in Te Reinga, on my own, I look back and am pleased. I continued to win in the college sports. I got second in the North Island Secondary Schools Championships, I qualified for the national championships and I won five medals in the Hawkes Bay Poverty Bay Championships.

More importantly I managed to swim up the narrow channel below the Te Reinga Falls and swim under the falls and into the cave on the other side. The swim was an ancient Maori warrior’s test. The cave was said to be the home of Hinekorako, one of very few female Maori Gods.

But I decided that further progress meant taking on the big city. It was time to swim for the Comet Club in Gisborne. I asked my parents if that would be okay and they approved. We drove to Gisborne and met Greg Meade and his coach mother, Beth Meade. By luck my swimming life was about to be influenced by one of the most knowledgeable and best people in New Zealand swimming. And that’s how the swimming thing all began.