The aspiring paralympians in our next story are all heading to Dunedin – why? Because
of one woman, Rayleen Bates.
I’m a bit of a what you see is what you get. There’s not too much pussy footing
around, you know basically if I’ve got a problem I’ll say it. Some people like that
and some people don’t.
She takes as much enjoyment in our success as we get ourselves.
I will not be happy if we don’t win a medal and it would be good if it’s a gold one.
Sunday morning at Dunedin’s Caledonian athletics track. For most people it’s a day of rest
but for two of New Zealand’s most promising paralympic athletes they’re arriving for
their sixth day of training this week. Right there with them coach Rayleen Bates.
The former international athlete and shot put champion has worked with some of the top
names in New Zealand athletics including Beatrice Famoena and Valerie Vili. Now she’s nurturing
paralympic’s most promising prospects. Rayleen had all but given up on coaching when Paralympics
asked her to step up.
I’ve been coaching now for just on 20 years and I must admit I was getting to the stage
where it was like “oh what am I going to do” and a lot of my athletes were retiring
or going overseas and I’d had a pretty strenuous four or five years prior to that but it’s
given me a whole new inspiration of coaching, the fact that they’re all so highly focused
and so motivated to achieve their goals it makes it easy for me to coach.
Six days a week Rayleen Bates is here at the Caledonian Sports Ground training her stable
of high performance athletes. Rayleen’s reputation is so impressive many young athletes
move to Dunedin to train under her and use her expertise to realize their sporting dreams.
20 year old Jess Hamill is just one of 16 athletes being trained by Rayleen. Jess first
started working with Rayleen four years ago when she was still living at home in Invercargill.
She traveled to and from Dunedin every week to get her expertise.
Not bad, not bad, just didn’t quite finish it off…legs were good, body was good, just
finish it off.
Under Rayleen’s guidance Jess is now making a name in international circuits competing
in shot put, discus and javelin. Mostly she competes in paralympic events but for the
Commonwealth Games she travels as part of the New Zealand team and competes in events
for athletes with a disability.
I’ve got Cerebral Palsy and the disability I have is walking but I can walk with crutches
or calipers, it’s just I don’t have the strength in my knees.
There’s heaps of different ways that people throw but I have a special frame that’s
specially designed for me. You have tie downs that you tie to the ground, it’s like a
bar stool with a pole and I hold on to the pole and that enables me to get momentum.
Rory McSweeney is an amputee who is honing his skills in the javelin. Rory has been a
sports man all his life but never at the elite level until he caught Rayleen’s eye at a
Paralympic’s talent spotting programme late last year.
Rory had applied but he had applied with the bike programme as his special interest through
them so we’d gone to Auckland and I was testing athletes and in the lunch time Rory
bowled on over and asked to have a go with the javelin or toss the spear was his words
so he had one go and I was standing there and saw this javelin go flying out and I said
“you better have another go” and than I said “just hold it there I think I’ll
have you”.
She gave me a few tips right then and there, it was probably one of our best sessions together
actually, like the javelin came up really well so I guess I had that feeling at the
time that this was a place that I was meant to be in.
Having recognized the potential of Jess and Rory Rayleen is now doing everything she can
to guide them onwards and upwards.
Pull
the body through.
He’s got that grit and determination but he’s also got that twinkle in the eye, he’s
got a great personality. He’s quite a bit of a perfectionist, he likes to do things
well but he’s very smart about what he does as well.
See how your feet aren’t down first? You’ve got to get those feet down before you pull,
your arms are Ok but you’ve just got to make sure those feet…big skip, feet down,
boom.
He’s a pleasure to coach he really is, he’s a really neat guy who has fitted in very well
with our training squad, he gets on really well with the other guys but he’s very determined
in what he wants to do, he’s got goals set and he’ll achieve them, he really will.
They’re not expecting Rory to peak yet – the coach’s goal? World record at the Rio Paralympics
in 2016. Between now and then there’s a planned buildup using World Champs and the
London Paralympics.
He lost his leg as a three year old but knows he was lucky the road accident didn’t end
his life.
I was at the park playing with a couple of other kids and my younger brother and wandered
off up the road through some pretty gnarly scrub and managed to make my way to the bridge
and got hit by a truck so it had to be amputated below the knee so that was quite fortunate.
The fortunate side was that I still had my knee so in terms of my functionality I’ve
still got a lot of normal human movement as opposed to if it was above the knee. Limbs
come with either no knee at all or a mechanical knee so it is quite fortunate and I guess
I’ve got my life too.
Rory has no track record yet in the international sense.
Athletics and particularly throwing is a long process of learning the technical, there’s
the whole 10,000 hour scenario and training and things like that and he only started throwing
at the end of 2009, he’s been to one Nationals in March, we’ve had to get limbs refitted
etc etc, change technique and he’s got a personal best of 38.86 metres at the moment
and he’s got to throw 41 metres for the world champs.
I’m very confident that he’s going to be doing that because he’s doing it in training
and he’s got huge potential in front of him and a huge future because at the end of
the day he’s only 25 and again he’s young, he’s got many Paralympics in front of him
and by the time we put that 10,000 hours in who knows how far he’ll be throwing.
Well in terms of competition I started this year so I had my first record throw in January
and so I’ve been competing since then and obviously London is the main goal. Making
it there and hopefully go beyond that too.
They were actually good throws, much better than we’ve had all week, still not quite
up to two weeks ago but you’re only probably about this far away. So we’ve got two more
weeks and that’s it. Awesome, well done. Good stuff.