World champions, national champions, woeful cricket, a one-in-six-trillion achievement and the oddest dividend make up this week’s delve into the Good, Bad, Ugly and downright weird of sport.
GOOD
Wairarapa motorcycle racer Eva Wintle sped to her first national trophy, taking out the GIXXER 150 class at Hampton Downs on Sunday in her first full championship campaign – see inside for more details.
Trey Bidois has almost singlehandedly carried the Red Star batting in recent weeks, and his 102 in their Coastal Challenge win over Weraroa was richly deserved.
The Golden Shears still has its lustre after 62 years, crowning a new open champion, Leon Samuels, and attracting record entries and capacity crowds to Wairarapa’s iconic sporting festival.
Carterton triathlete Scott Harpham showed he is not far away from the leading pros with an improved showing in finishing seventh in Ironman NZ. Geordie Beamish [1500m] sprinted home, and Hamish Kerr [high jump] Fosbury flopped to gold at the World Indoor Athletics Champs in Glasgow, while Eliza McCartney [pole vault] and Tom Walsh [shot put] put silver around their necks. But it’s too early to get carried away about the Paris Olympics prospects, with several leading contenders sitting out Glasgow.
The Hurricanes ticker was severely tested in their Super Rugby win over the Queensland Reds in Super Rugby, overcoming the red card to Jordie Barrett [more about that in ‘Bad’] to score a 38–33 extra-time victory.
BAD
Barrett’s red card tops the bill. The All Black midfielder can’t argue with the three-week ban for what was simply a dumb tackle. When will these players learn there’s no escaping the eagle-eyed TMO?
Grassroots rugby has been hit a blow to the nether regions with news that Sky TV is kicking to touch the two shows that extensively cover club and Heartland Rugby – the Grassroots Rugby and Mainfreight Rugby programmes.
Sports organisations websites! All we want is correct and updated draws, scores, points tables, and easy navigation around the website – not something where you have to traverse the Congo tropical rainforest to find.
UGLY
A toss-up where the Black Caps’ loss to Australia fits, but bad bowling [at times], awful batting, sloppy fielding, poor discipline in all three facets, and then an admission they misread the pitch and should have played a specialist spinner add up to their effort sliding into the ugly zone. Don’t bank on it getting any better at Hagley Oval.
WHAT THE ????
Kiwi golfer Amelia Garvey became the first professional ever to record an albatross, a hole-in-one and an eagle on three separate holes of a round in finishing in a tie for seventh in the Royal St. Cloud Women’s Championship on the NXXT Tour.
Garvey teed off her phenomenal effort with an eagle on the par-five first, then an ace on the par-three sixth, and the coup-de-grace an albatross [three under] on the par-five 13th, an improbable feat at cumulative odds of about six trillion to one.
The place odds for runnerup Sol De Otono in the last race at the Tauherenīkau races on Sunday were nowhere near as attractive, but the place dividend of $11.80 for the second favourite, who was paying $5.80 for the win had more than a few punters scratching their heads. The unusually high place pool of $180000 was the reason behind the skewed payout, but how that came about is baffling. Was it a TAB error or simply an over-enthusiastic punter? I assume we will never know!
