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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

SportsMay 19, 2022

The triathlete who won and won and won

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Erin Baker started 121 triathlons in her career. She finished first in 104 of them. 

On a freezing road in Almere, Amsterdam, Erin Baker’s bike tyre punctured. It was 1985 and for 120 kilometres, the 23 year-old had led all but a few of the best male athletes, knuckles first, through atrocious conditions in the first Ironman Triathlon European Championship. Now, cracking her icy grip from the handlebars, she tried to summon the fine motor skills required to change the tire.

Elsewhere in Almere, her coach gripped a warm drink, watching the misery unfold on a café television. He saw Baker, hands frozen to the bone, unable to budge the hard rubber of her tyre. He saw a well-meaning bystander grab the wheel, ignoring her protests that any help would mean disqualification. He saw her fend the shocked, would-be hero off with a swinging bike pump. Then, he saw Baker tear the tyre off her wheel – with her teeth. She got back on the bike, and nine hours and 26 minutes after the starting gun, she won.

“I did what I needed to do to win events and if I had to chew a tyre off I did it.” Nearly four decades later, Baker rationalises the incident that earned her the name Animal, quickly clarifying “I pulled it off, I didn’t eat the tyre.”

Baker’s coach (a title he reels back to “advisor” or “partner in crime”), former NZ Champion triathlete John Hellemans, was used to her rabid determination by the time he watched her gnaw the bike. A year or so earlier, she opened their coaching relationship with a bold, cold call from Australia, seeking tips for Sydney’s Royal National Park Triathlon – an event in which her bike seat immediately broke, prompting her to ride the 40km cycle leg standing. It was her first ever triathlon. She won.

After a handful more triathlons and equal number of wins, Baker and Hellemans crossed paths. Baker got straight to the point. “I am Erin Baker,” she told him, “and I want to be world champion one day in this sport.” Hellemans remembers smiling to himself and thinking about it, then shrugging: “why not?”

Baker was ready and willing to sacrifice her lifestyle and career for the higher cause, and it wouldn’t be her first rodeo. Only a few of years prior she had fled Christchurch to Darwin after losing her job and gaining a criminal conviction protesting the 1981 Springbok Tour – actions inspired her mother Mary Baker, who was the Christchurch chairperson for Coalition Against The Tour. “[Mum] was just incredibly aware of justice. So I think justice was our thing.”

Mary is widely credited with being the first person to actively demonstrate against the Springboks when she found herself returning to New Zealand on the same flight. Having her pre-takeoff pleas ignored, Mary declined breakfast in the morning and with the all-white team trapped under meal trays, marched the aisle with a sick bag placard she’d crafted overnight, reading “SHAME”.

On land, Baker rolled with the young radicals, participating in sit-ins, blocking roads and other non-violent actions. In Nelson, this meant trying to stop the Springbok bus getting to the game, however this time the penalty was heftier than being held in a squash court until game’s end. Baker was arrested and prosecuted in the High Court for the serious offences of possessing and throwing an explosive at police, under the Arms Act. True to form, Erin doesn’t sugarcoat what she threw that day when asked – but says it wasn’t an explosive.

Back in Christchurch and training full-time, the first event on the to-do list was the 1985 Toohey’s International Ironman in New South Wales. A 4km swim, followed by a 180km bike ride, topped off with a full 42.4km marathon run. It was Baker’s first event of this length. She won, by 40 minutes.

“I trained full time. I just trained. I didn’t know what I was doing.” Blind preparation for her maiden Ironman involved drafting in the wake of Olympic swimmer Brett Naylor, 170-odd km round trip bike rides to Akaroa or Ashburton or somewhere else you really want a car to get to, and running countless kilometres on the Sumner Hills – all in the same day.

Erin Baker (Photo: Scratched)

Muscle memory fired up from a Kaiapoi childhood spent in the Rangiora Pool, on her bike (a seventh-birthday Baker tradition) and cross-country running. Also firing was that competitive mentality which had struck fear into poor children strapped to her ankle for three-legged-races since the early days.

“I didn’t know it, that other people weren’t like that,” the now 60-year-old reflects. “When I was just a primary school kid, definitely no older than six… I was so nervous about sports day.” Baker would even stress about the fun races. “I was running to win, or to be first, or to be competitive… Probably parents stood on the sideline and thought, ‘Oh, that girl’s a nightmare’.”

“[Erin] wasn’t very good at team sports,” Maureen Baker agrees, with that sparkly mix of fondness and piss-taking that only a sister can nail. “She is just very black and white about how someone should participate. She would get frustrated with people in her team that didn’t want to put the same amount of energy or effort into the game. So best that she went the singular, solo route.”

After the Toohey’s Ironman slaughter the solo route led to more established triathlon circuits overseas. Maureen joined as manager – her bright orange hair visible in grainy YouTube videos of Erin busting finish line ribbons across Europe. Not in America though, where the money and the prestige were greater. That pesky conviction meant no visa.

Despite living the career-limiting consequences of fighting for justice, Baker continued to voice her protest – this time against inequalities of gender.

Triathlon’s relative infancy meant sexist prize money disparity wasn’t as extreme as in other sports; even by Baker’s account triathlon was “fairly equal” from the outset. But there were also less blatant injustices – men’s cash prizes running deeper into the finishers or the overall winner (always a man) receiving a car. As in 1981, Baker risked her career to right these wrongs. The world champion used both her presence and her absence to demand fairness, boycotting events which didn’t have equal prize money and showing up at the International Triathlon Union (now World Triathlon) Congress to talk inequality. Equal prize money was soon regulated in the sport and remains cast into triathlon’s governing body’s rules. According to Hellemans, “that was led by Erin Baker.”

Erin Baker (Photo: Scratched)

By 1986, Baker’s absence from the Hawai’i Ironman World Championship had become a lose/lose situation that also needed righting. Despite having international race stats that read like a vertical line of 1s, only occasionally interrupted by a 2nd place finish, Baker imagined a footnote “but she doesn’t do Hawai’i”. There are hazy recollections of a late night phone call from America, something about the event-aligned International Management Group, something about someone campaigning someone who may have been a senator… Whatever the case, mere weeks before the 1986 Hawaiian Ironman, Baker’s elusive Visa materialised. But Baker wasn’t ready. She ended up cycling off the course and straight to her hotel.

A year later she was better prepared, but not for the cramping. She was leading, again, but having stopped to pick up a hat from the road, her leg seized and she stood like a statue, unable to move. Once again her coach watched on, this time from the side of the road, among a crowd of spectators who had fallen silent at the sight of Baker clutching her leg. He saw women she had been leading start to whizz past. He saw her slowly straighten up. Then he saw her awkwardly hobble ahead, unconvinced she would be able to restart her run, let alone finish the race. She won.

She won again in 1990.

By the time she retired in 1994, Baker had entered 121 races and won 104 of them. She had nine World Championships to her name across short, medium, and Ironman distances – something Maureen compares to being both a marathon and 100m sprint champion. She was named Triathlete of the Decade by US Triathlete Magazine, won New Zealand’s supreme Halberg Award and was added to the World Triathlon Hall of Fame.

These days Baker still cycles the Port Hills for enjoyment, but harbours no desire to keep her own sporting legend alive. She only kept one trophy (which the Christchurch quakes took care of), and convincing her to film Scratched was a years-long effort. In the end she only agreed to do it in the window between selling her orthopaedics business and whatever she does next.

One morning, nearly half her life ago, she decided not to get out of bed for a race again. And she never did  – except for a final event which was already locked in. She won.

Watch the full series of Scratched: Aotearoa’s Lost Sporting Legends now. Made with support from NZ On Air.

Keep going!
overhead view of a cyclist on a track printed with the Olympic rings
A New Zealand cyclist warms up at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2021. (Photo: Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

OPINIONSportsMay 16, 2022

This damning cycling report should be a wake-up call for all NZ Olympic sport

overhead view of a cyclist on a track printed with the Olympic rings
A New Zealand cyclist warms up at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2021. (Photo: Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

It should be – but it won’t.

This story first appeared on The Bounce, a Substack newsletter by Dylan Cleaver.

The independent inquiry into cycling wasn’t really a report on cycling at all.

It was instead a referendum into the funding and culture of high-performance Olympic sport in New Zealand and the verdict is in: It’s screwed.

It was also, curiously, a survey on Cambridge, the one-time farming and bloodstock service centre that has reinvented itself as an Olympic medal hothouse for sports like rowing, triathlon and cycling.

The independent panel of Mike Heron QC, Dr Sarah Leberman, Genevieve Macky and Dr Lesley Nichol was commissioned in the wake of the sudden death of cyclist Olivia Podmore and has tabled a 104-page report that criticises myriad aspects of the high-performance system.

They highlight a culture that is obsessed with winning medals at the cost of wellbeing, that muzzles athletes, that treats women particularly poorly, and which essentially forces its young into a centralised system that does more harm than good while paying them poorly for the pleasure.

While the focus was cycling, the broad picture painted by the report was similar to others of its ilk and could be applied across a range of sports that rely on government funding to run high-performance programmes.

It also includes this paragraph, which on merit deserves to be higher than its page 53 placement.

“Aotearoa NZ’s small sporting community tends to recruit or ‘recycle’ personnel from within ‘the system’. This was referred to as ‘shoulder tapping’, the ‘old boys’ club’, and ‘jobs for mates’. We perceive an over-reliance on bringing in recruits that people already know (even, in some cases, where past performance has been suboptimal). This curtails attempts to ensure diversity, introduce new ideas, and in some instances maintains and rewards poor behaviour.”

This is New Zealand sports administration summed up in a paragraph; there is no employment sector in New Zealand where you can fail so spectacularly upwards.

(A handful of sources in high-profile positions within high-performance sport have approached me in the past 12 months aghast at some of the appointments made at Sport New Zealand and its wholly owned subsidiary High Performance Sport New Zealand [HPSNZ] but none will go on the record, fearful of what happens when you rock the boat at an organisation you rely on for your existence.)

Simon Van Velthooven competes during day three of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games (Photo: Getty Images).

The sorts of things that provoke reports into the culture at sports including cycling (x2), hockey, football, triathlon and rowing happen when your very worth as an organisation is calculated at a jamboree once every four years.

These reports will continue to include cut-and-paste lines like this: “The vast majority of people we interviewed (and the survey results) told us that the [high-performance programme] funding model … prioritises medals over wellbeing, and that has had consequences that undermined athlete and staff wellbeing.”

This inquiry was prompted by the death of Podmore, 24, but it has its roots in a previous report into Cycling New Zealand, also authored by Heron in 2018. That report listed a number of recommendations after it found a dysfunctional organisation that lacked transparency, tried to cover up inappropriate relationships and had a disregard for athlete welfare.

The changes required have not been introduced as efficiently and effectively as necessary, and there remains unresolved and “ongoing trauma” from the incidents at a training camp in Bordeaux in 2016 that prompted the original report.

Raelene Castle, chief executive of Sport New Zealand and HPSNZ said: “I would like to personally acknowledge that some of the people who have contributed to this process continue to be impacted by the events during, and subsequent to, the Bordeaux Camp. It is clear that for them, the issues remain unresolved.

“I am sorry that they continue to suffer this trauma and we would like to engage with them if they think there are any additional steps that would help them with their healing.”

Cycling NZ, too, acknowledged the issues covered in the report.

Chairman Phil Holden said: The report is a forthright look at Cycling New Zealand and how it has been running its high-performance programme. There are many issues that must be addressed, such as favouritism, non-disclosure agreements and the welfare and wellbeing of athletes, especially women.

“The next step is to discuss the recommendations with the people directly affected by them – the athletes, our staff, our member organisations, sponsors, and the wider cycling community,” he said.

Yet it is clear CNZ pushed back on elements of the report.

One amusingly succinct footnote to the assertion that “a specific focus on medal-winning is problematic and anathema to the wellbeing of coaches and athletes”, simply noted: “CNZ disagrees.”

It is also clear that massive trust issues still exist between athletes and administrators. The report noted the difficulties getting cyclists to speak and one source told The Spinoff that only four current high-performance athletes engaged in interviews.

While this number couldn’t be verified, the report noted: “Some CNZ athletes reported that they were afraid to speak up about personal grievances, physical or mental health concerns, or complain about staff or processes that negatively impact them out of fear that they will be seen as incapable and will not be selected. This sense of mistrust has impacted this Inquiry, too. Several people (particularly athletes) raised concerns about whether they could trust that this process would be confidential and anonymous. Others were concerned it was a box-ticking exercise that would not produce meaningful change. The fact that some stakeholders did not feel that they could safely participate in this process is concerning and may speak to the culture people are experiencing.”

Those concerns come under the umbrella of “transparency” and here the practice of getting athletes to sign non-disclosure agreements was assailed.

“A theme of what we heard is that certain key decisions, including selection, recruitment, carding, and competitions, are reported as not transparent. Reasons are not given and requests for data are ignored, denied, or fulfilled at the last minute. The practices outlined above fail to meet that standard and in any event are not acceptable. They directly diminish wellbeing,” the report noted.

“The seemingly closed culture and use of NDAs is concerning… CNZ considers that its approach to NDAs and confidentiality is orthodox and consistent with commercial practice. The difference we see is that CNZ is not like most commercial entities: in high performance, it is a publicly funded monopoly. In our view, it has an obligation to be more transparent and to thereby provide public accountability.”

Female athletes can experience even higher pressure than their male counterparts. (Image: Getty/Archi Banal)

Perhaps the most far-reaching conclusion in high-performance sport didn’t concern athlete welfare and transparency, which sadly have become almost boilerplate issues, but the push for a more decentralised programme.

Some of the concerns revolved around Cambridge itself: the pressurised, almost claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town with a high cost of living that, paradoxically, is a place where everybody knows what everyone else is up to yet it can be lonely as many athletes moves there away from family and support systems before they are mature enough to cope.

The report notes that more consideration needs to be given to those who are suited to living in a hot-bed, adding that many who aren’t even involved in the high-performance programme move there because they feel it is the only place their talent will get noticed.

Bluntly, it states that centralisation is not healthy and that the regional pathways need to be strengthened, yet recently CNZ closed down its four regional hubs due to resourcing considerations.

“Long-term centralisation carries risks for athlete wellbeing,” the report says. “Those risks would be mitigated or removed by a development and HP model that supports athletes to train in their home regions. When regional options are lacking, or under-resourced athletes move to Cambridge for want of support and opportunities that may or may not be provided.”

The report goes into detail to how the Targeted Athlete Pathway Support (TAPS) that have replaced previous grants are not responsive to need and are “generally low compared to living costs” in Cambridge, where rents are high.

“While it is inevitable that some athletes will come from wealthier backgrounds than others, a system that relies on athletes having alternative sources of funding (particularly when athletes have limited capacity to earn extra income) entrenches the assumption that high-performance sport and cycling in particular are the exclusive preserve of the middle to upper classes (alongside the prevalence of pākehā). It makes sport exclusive. That is inequitable and HPSNZ, as a Crown agent, ought to work towards greater equity of opportunities.”

In totality, the report is the latest in a long line of pleas to put the athlete, not the system, in the centre of the room. To give them support and agency over decisions concerning them in a sector that devours its young. It posits that consideration must be given to making the athletes employees, not contractors, to protect some of the rights most of us take for granted in our “work”.

More than once it says the athletes need an organisation that works in their interests that is independent and not tied financially to CNZ or HPSNZ, which sounds a lot like a union to me.

While it is speaking directly to cyclists and CNZ, the following truth is universal across most if not all Olympic sports:

“A fundamental power imbalance between the athlete and other stakeholders arises because the athlete is the only person who can deliver performances/medals, but has the least control over organisational structures and systems that directly affect them.”

Until next time, and there will be a next time, over to you Sport NZ.

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