New Zealand’s newest swimming star speaks to Madeleine Chapman.

Tupou Neiufi eats with her right hand, writes with her right hand, and pushes a supermarket trolley with her right hand. In everyday life, she heavily favours her right side after being hit by a car at two years old and left with a traumatic brain injury and hemiplegia. Hemiplegia results in one side of the body being bigger and stronger than the other side. For Neiufi, it’s her right side that does the heavy lifting. But in the pool, such favouritism doesn’t work.

Earlier this month, while her Māngere East neighbours were in lockdown, Neiufi was in the pool in Tokyo, winning gold in the 100m backstroke – S8. She had the preferred middle lane and went into the race ranked in the top five, but says she had no expectations and “just really wanted to get there and beat my time from earlier this year”. Trailing throughout the first lap, Neiufi closed the gap before developing a comfortable lead in the final lap. In doing so, she won her first Paralympic gold and the first in New Zealand’s 2020 campaign.

Back in Auckland now, the 20 year-old, who grew up in Māngere East with Tongan parents and six younger siblings, has been sleeping “till like 12” in MIQ while she waits to go home. Her rest is well-earned. Prior to the Games, Neiufi was training full-time. She had been studying as well but gave it up to focus on Tokyo, given the sheer volume of training. That volume included a weekly timetable of between six and eight two-hour swim sessions, two 90-minute weight sessions, and four cardio sessions. “We work just as hard as other athletes,” she says, noting that her weight sessions work to her own strengths and weaknesses. “For deadlifts, I can’t grip with the left side so I strap in one hand.” For individual weights and single reps, her right side lifts more than her left side.

It’s an adjustment in the same way everyone adjusts in the gym, but has been a source of frustration in the past. “It’s quite hard to build muscle on the left side, I don’t know why,” she says, laughing. “I’ve been trying for years and it’s not really getting far.”

Neiufi took up swimming at the suggestion of a doctor, who said it would be good for her physical rehabilitation. She was nine years old and had been playing netball but was having trouble keeping up while wearing her arm and leg splints. In the pool, there were no splints and no way to completely isolate half of her body. She immediately took to it, and was soon on the radar of Paralympics selectors. Even now, a decade later, the benefits of her swimming career extend far beyond gold medals. “I know for a fact that if I wasn’t training as much as I am or swimming in general, my left side at the moment would probably be quite stiff and really weak.”

Neiufi says as she gets older, her left side is still stiffening up and weakening, which has meant a change in competition classification from S9 to S8. Para athletes are grouped by the degree of activity limitation resulting from an impairment, from 1-10. The lower the number, the more severe the activity limitation. “Some people just get classified once and that’s it for the rest of their life,” Neiufi explains. “But [for] some people, like me, they believe that they should reclassify every few years just to have a look and check up on our disabilities. With me, they believe that it will deteriorate, where it gets worse over the years.”

She’s always known she’d have to “face something after sport” and plans to return to studies after swimming but for now, Neiufi is simply happy to have given her family, community, and culture something to be proud of. “The support from the [Pacific] community and South Auckland was so overwhelming, there were so many posts,” she says of the reaction to her win. “You know there’s Valerie Adams, there’s so many other athletes that grew up in South Auckland and I just felt so honoured and happy to be able to help them shine light on our area and give our kids in South Auckland… I just hope that we were able to help them know that you’re able to achieve any goal and dream as long as you put your mind to it.”

The South Auckland part is important. After her win, which came in the midst of a delta outbreak heavily affecting communities in South Auckland, many fans asked why Neiufi wasn’t being identified as a swimmer from South Auckland in all the positive news stories. “Growing up, when we’ve had bad stuff happen in our area it is always classed as South Auckland and then when good things happen it’s known as just Auckland or New Zealand,” she says. “For me, it would be nice if they’d include South Auckland, especially since South Auckland’s been having it pretty hard with the Pacific community over the last couple of weeks. I would like to have South Auckland there because it gives our little area a little light to shine.”

While she’s been ordered to rest, Neiufi is already looking ahead to the 2022 Commonwealth Games and the 2024 Olympics. She’s had an exercise bike delivered to her hotel room and has largely been staying away from the news and media, especially when it’s about her (“the last thing I want to be hearing is my voice”). Once she’s out, she plans to head straight back to the pool and the gym, and then home to South Auckland.

Rugby writer, rugby fan, and an inspiration to so many, Mike Pulman has died aged 29. Jamie Wall pays tribute.

It’s less than a minute into the Chiefs versus Hurricanes game on Anzac weekend and Mike Pulman is fuming. I’m alongside him high up in the main stand of FMG Stadium Waikato, in the media box where we first met a couple of years earlier. It’s not actually the real media box, that’s down the hall full of fans necking Waikato Draught and talking shit. Despite being the layout of a uni lecture theatre, the Chiefs have turned it into a hospitality suite and relocated the journalists to a spare room barely big enough to fit four of us. The view is terrible, and if you’re unlucky enough to get the seat on the far right of the wobbly bench provided for us, you can’t actually see half the field.

I give Mike’s wheelchair a little nudge with my elbow. The Canes have scored already and they are looking good to knock over the home side, yet again. 

Mike just breathes a sigh of audible frustration. He loves the Chiefs, they are the team he’s grown up with and even though he’s up here with the media, he can’t shake the fact that he’s a fan, first and foremost. I’ve tried to tell him that he needs to be a soulless cynic like the rest of us. We always catch up when I come down from Auckland to Hamilton and cover the Chiefs games. It’s every fortnight or so during the Super Rugby season and I’ll wait in the central city mall cafe for him to arrive in the hours before kickoff.

I don’t know exactly why Mike is in a wheelchair. It’s never come up. All I know is what I can see – he has the use of his hands and forearms, but even then I can tell that using them takes a lot of effort. The wheelchair is massive, electrically powered and he controls it with his thumb and forefinger. He can’t turn his head, so when we sit next to each other in the media box he looks at our reflections in the window to gauge our expressions. He has a carer with him whenever he comes to the stadium, sometimes it’s his partner Jess. But ever since we met all he wants to talk about is rugby, cricket and writing about rugby and cricket, so that’s all we talk about. Sometimes he sends me messages to check in, for no other reason than just to see how I’m doing.

The Chiefs have accredited him as a journalist and he spends each game in our little room tapping away on his laptop, noting down the tries and kicks and letting out a small cheer every time they score. Even that sounds like it exhausts him.

Tonight it’s just the three of us in the box, Aaron Goile from Stuff is there too. It’s a bit of a comedown from the pre-Covid days, when there were around half a dozen of us in for every game. Despite our tiny room, FMG Stadium Waikato is a fun place to hang out. The Chiefs are good to deal with and there is a sense of camaraderie among the media, so much so that radio commentator Nigel Yalden started a baking roster. Even Ollie Ritchie from Newshub made an effort, although we all suspect he just bought some cupcakes from a bakery.

The game keeps moving along at a pretty good pace, the Chiefs edge ahead and Damian McKenzie is really pulling the strings. “DMac” is Mike’s favourite, he reckons he should be starting for the All Blacks. It’s only one of the things we disagree on, my lot is in with Jordie Barrett. But there’s more than just All Black selection we don’t see eye to eye on. Mike is a pretty conservative guy. I admire that about him, he never has a problem saying he doesn’t agree with things and that some people need to just harden up.

Jordie sends over a penalty goal from 63 metres out and I nudge Mike’s wheelchair again. Mike spits out an F-bomb. 

Mike’s always asked the rest of us about how he can be a journalist full time. We gave him tips, put him in contact with people, went on his podcast and told him not to worry about being in the daunting and pressurised media environment. We are just regular people at work. That’s how he was treated when he came into the environment too, one of the boys having a joke and not being afraid to pipe up. The only time his wheelchair was ever mentioned was when he bragged about being exempt from driving it under the influence, which led to a suggestion that he could tow us home at the end of a big night.

Deep into the second half and the Hurricanes go in front thanks to a try to Billy Proctor. Mike is gutted, he had to put up with the Chiefs going winless in Super Rugby Aotearoa last year. For the rest of us it was great, coach Warren Gatland’s woes were a constantly fruitful narrative, but Mike was watching the team he was devoted to turn into a joke. Gatland would attend each press conference with the demeanour of a funeral director who had just dug their own grave.

But this year was different. Gatland was gone, replaced by Clayton McMillan, a big former cop who dresses like a tradie uncle wearing his one set of mismatched nice clothes at a wedding. He liked Mike and his little digital camera recording questions and answers post match, but then again all the Chiefs players did too. They’d turn to their right, look down and make sure Mike got what he needed out of every press conference. Sam Cane, Anton Lienert-Brown, Brad Weber – it didn’t matter if they were All Blacks, they had time for him.

The Chiefs had repaid Mike’s faith in 2021, charging to an unlikely finals appearance. But they look to be coming undone tonight against the Canes, who lead by one as the hooter goes.

Penalty Chiefs. Forty metres out. Mike’s man DMac steps up and places the ball on the tee, then gives his trademark grin. I look at Mike, he’s transfixed by his team and the hope of victory. He’s clenched his fists in anticipation. The ball leaves DMac’s boot and never looks like missing, Mike is ecstatic, exhausted. It’s one of the best wins his team has ever had.

Later, we’re downstairs after the post-match chats, packing up and about to leave. It’s the final home game for the Chiefs so we’re all shaking hands and wishing each other luck. Mike rolls around and gives us all a fist bump, trying not to show just how hard it is for him to raise his arm to do so.

It would be the last time I saw him.

Mike Pulman died last week. It wasn’t due to the spinal muscular atrophy he lived with his whole life, but from complications due to injuries suffered in a car accident. He was 29, over twice the age his parents were told he’d live to be when he was born. His casket will be taken around Seddon Park and FMG Stadium Waikato, and he’ll be buried in his Chiefs jersey gifted to him by Damian McKenzie.

Mike wanted to be a sports journalist. He wanted to be an example to people facing challenges. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to be one of the boys. He achieved all of those things.

But he never stopped being a fan when he wrote about the Chiefs. I’m glad he never listened to me on that one.