Rotorua waka ama veteran grabs national medal haul

Veteran Rotorua Waka Ama competitor Maylene Papuni with her team. Maylene Papuni is in the pink hat. Photo: Supplied.

Veteran Rotorua Waka Ama competitor Maylene Papuni has added to her career medal haul with a gold, silver and bronze at the recent National Waka Ama Championships held at Karapiro.

Maylene, who represented New Zealand at the World Championships in Tahiti in 2018, paddled to a silver medal in the individual women's final and bronze with her Rotorua club Te Au Rere Waka team.

She was then selected to race in the national W12's 500m final for Te Puku O Te ika, winning gold.

The Te Puku O Te ika - ‘the stomach of the fish' region includes Huntly, Tauranga, Opotiki and across to Taranaki.

Maylene, a local business owner of Aramex Rotorua, admits she was the ‘matriarch' of the team at 54 years of age, with ten team members aged between 16 and 19 years and the other team member aged 40.

'I've been busy training over the last three months, in what's also the busiest time of the year for the business, delivering parcels across the region, but I always had my waka on the roof racks and I'd head off at 5.30pm to train.

'It's awesome to be able to continue to compete. When I qualified for Te Puku O Te Ika, Regional team our first training was on the day. I gave everyone our race strategy on the way to the start line and to go hard & strong for 500 metres and that's what we did,” says Maylene.

'It was awesome to come back to work at the Aramex Rotorua depot and celebrate with the team and show them that you can work hard but also play hard too.”

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