My Account
As Olympic fever grips the world this month, Leigh resident Wendy Brown has more insight than most into what the athletes will be going through. Although she is quick to point out that she has never competed at an Olympic level, she represented NZ at two Commonwealth Games, two World Championships and is a four-times World Masters Champion. Her NZ-record in the 100 metres stood for 20 years and in 1984 she was awarded an MBE for services to sport. And while she doesn’t condone drugs in sport, she says she can understand why some athletes use them …
Like most athletes, my ambition was always to get to an Olympics, but it seemed that when they came along in ’72 and ’76 I was either pregnant or had just given birth. I first represented NZ at a Trans-Tasman meet, in the 100m and 200m sprints, in Sydney when I was 19. My first major international was at the Pan Pacific Games in Canada in 1973, when I beat Australian champion Raelene Boyle to come second. The following year we were at the Commonwealth Games and I finished fifth in the 100m final, sixth in the 200m and NZ was fourth in the women’s relay. Those were the drug years in terms of international sport, particularly in regards to the Eastern Block countries. We knew other athletes were taking them, but you could never prove anything. I ran against Flo Jo [American track and field athlete Florence Joyner who died of an epileptic seizure aged 38] in a B grade race in Belgium, and then two years later, she was breaking the world record. There is no way that she could have naturally improved that much because she just wasn’t good enough. Raelene Boyle came second three times at the Olympics and it was stated she was always the world’s fastest “clean” athlete. Some of the records that were set during those years will never be broken – it just won’t be possible without drugs. I certainly don’t condone performance enhancing drugs, but there is a part of me that understands why people do it. Drugs can’t make a champion, but they can help you train harder and recover faster.
I started my athletics career by tagging along after my older sisters. I used to tell them that the reason I could run fast was that I was always trying to get away from them! We grew up in Taranaki, where our father David Urquhart was a butcher. He’d emigrated from Scotland when he was 21, settled in Waitara and found a job at the freezing works. After the war, he opened his own butcher shop. He eventually had six shops and was the first person in NZ to send up spotter planes for tuna. It was while he was stationed in Trieste, Italy, that he met Tilde, my mother. She was a war bride and was probably considered quite exotic in New Plymouth in those days. In Italy, she was a singer, mainly opera, and arriving in NZ must have been a culture shock, but she didn’t have a lot of time to worry about it – within four years, she had four daughters. My younger brother was born five years later. Dad was typical of a lot of returned servicemen; he never spoke much about his wartime service. In 1977, when I was competing in Europe, I met my parents and brother in Italy and we did a tour of the places he had served. It gave me a much better understanding of the enormity of what our soldiers had been through.
I left home at 17 to go to teacher training college in Palmerston North where I met my future husband, Ian, also from Taranaki. The next few years went by in a bit of blur – I was teaching at 19, Ian and I married when I was 20, Matthew was born when I was 21 and Gabrielle arrived when I was 23. I sometimes wonder how I managed to fit everything in – I was teaching, the mother of two small children, training and competing internationally. I guess I was just young with plenty of energy. Ian was always very supportive as well. Between us, we taught in Mangere, New Plymouth, Warkworth and Wellsford – Ian at the college and me at the primary school. We’d only been north as far as Orewa before Ian got the job at Rodney College. We moved into a school house and found we were working with a young and very social bunch of teachers, who loved sport and were fully involved in the community. We just loved it and had an amazing time. I started competing for Northland and coached athletics first at Rodney and later at Mahurangi. Meanwhile, Ian played and coached cricket in summer and rugby in winter.
In 1992, we did a teachers exchange to York and took the opportunity to attend the Barcelona Olympics, as spectators I might add. When we returned to NZ we were feeling restless so Ian took a job as the head of O’Rorke Hall, one of Auckland University’s halls of residence. We lived on the 12th floor with amazing views – if you’re going to live in the city, that’s the way to do it. I used the time to get my real estate licence and worked for Harcourts at Ellerslie. We then spent six fabulous years at University Hall in Christchurch. We got into cycling in a big way and made a point of exploring as much of the South Island as we could. We’d bought land in Leigh in 1982 and built in 2000, so when we moved back to the north, Ian semi-retired and I took a job with Harcourts in Warkworth. This was just before the Great Financial Crisis of 2007/08. Before the year was out I found myself redundant. It was a heck of a shock as I hadn’t seen it coming. As it happened, Ian was asked to manage a hall of residence in Wellington so we packed up again and moved to the capital where we spent a very enjoyable four years.
While all this was going on, I had the privilege in 2001 of being one of two coaches of the NZ team that competed in the World Youth Championships in Poland. The team included a young shot putter, Valerie Adams. Her coach Kirsten Hellier couldn’t make the trip so Val, who was only 14, became my responsibility. She was already a big girl at 6’2” so attracted a lot of attention and wasn’t slow to give a bit of cheek if people stared for too long. She has a great sense of humour, is a natural linguist and has a real thirst for knowledge, but what really struck me was her humility. She’d had to raise $4000 to get on the tour, which would have been almost impossible without the generous support of the Tongan community. A friend had also tucked $200 in her pocket for “spending money”. While the other kids collected their souvenirs, she never spent a cent on herself – everything she bought was for family and friends. You could see she was going to be a champion right from the start. Even then, she demonstrated amazing mental toughness and the confidence to back herself.
Although Ian and I married young, we always supported each other’s individual interests. We’d often joke about how were we going to be able to put up with each other 24/7 when we both retired fulltime. As it was, that didn’t turn out to be much of an issue. When we moved back to Leigh, Ian did retire but I worked as the training manager for Harcourts Tandem and then managed Harcourts Warkworth for eight months until they found a replacement. I finished in May 2014 and Ian died suddenly of a heart attack in October. Our retirement together had lasted just five months. A friend once told me that although life’s not fair, it still could be good, and I kept reminding myself of that after losing Ian. I’m naturally a ‘glass half full’ sort of person and thankfully, I had three beautiful grandchildren to remind me that I still had things to look forward to. It was just a matter of taking one day at a time and I made sure I kept busy. The support from the Leigh community, and a couple of friends who had been through similar grief, was also amazing. I also knew that Ian would have wanted me to carry on crossing things off our bucket list. I’ve gone back to real estate and am currently the licensee for Harcourts in Mangawhai. It’s lovely to be renewing old acquaintances. I’m coaching Olivia Haddon’s women’s relay team, which will compete in the World Master Masters in Auckland next year, and I even belong to a cycling group. After two hip replacements I can’t run anymore, but I can still go fast!
