Roger Te Puni leaps back from injury

Press, 24 December 1986, Page 20

Roger Te Puni leaps back from injury

By

ROD DEW

For the last five years Roger Te Puni has reigned supreme as New Zealand’s leading high jumper and if his recordbreaking performance in Auckland less than a fortnight ago is any indication his stay at the top is by no means near its end. Te Puni, formerly of Wellington and now living in Auckland, cleared 2.19 m, rising a centimetre above the previous record which he set while representing New Zealand at the Pacific Conference Games in California in 1985.

“I was fresh. I could do no wrong,” Te Puni, still elated at his success, recalled during his visit to Queen Elizabeth II Park for the Technical invitation meeting last Saturday.

The record came after a dreadful winter in which he was able to do very little training because of damaged tendons in his left leg. “I took the whole winter to get over it.. With this sort of back-

ground, there is no way I should have jumped that height. But I did it easily and I had a pretty good attempt at 2.23 m.” Te Puni was actually treating the Auckland meeting as a warm-up for the Christchurch meeting last Saturday, and he had high hopes of another big jump. He was stopped at 2.13 m, good enough for a comfortable victory but not as high as he wanted. Two very good attempts at 2.17 m failed by the narrowest of margins. In the first attempt, he flicked the bar off with the back of his shorts.

“I should have got over on my first attempt,” Te Puni said. “But I guess it is unreasonable to expect to jump record heights two weeks in a row.” At the time he said he felt “full of jumping” and with "enough spring to clear 2.20 m.” Without the benefit of a winter build-up, he real-

ises that he must now stop competing and get in “some solid work.” His hope is to come out again in the grand prix meeting in Wellington at the end of January, and lift his New Zealand record even higher. His target is 2.22 m, the qualifying height for the world championships in Rome next August. “I want to get in the team for the world championships. I know there is some scheme whereby athletes have to pay their own way to Europe and then get reimbursed if they compete in the championships. But if I can qualify before I leave, I can’t see the selectors leaving me out.” Te Puni has not jumped so well since he was in the United States in 1985, but he was very disappointed not to be selected for the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games. “I needed one more cen-

timetre to qualify, and I missed out. But if I had gone I am confident I would have taken the bronze medal.”

Since his leg injury first started troubling him in November last year, Te Puni has changed his technique. “I was putting too much effort into my takeoff,” he said. “I have cut down my last stride, and have gone from a power jumper to a speed and power jumper, if you can follow that.”

The change certainly seems to have worked. Te Puni reported no ill-ef-fects as far as his leg was concerned and said he was finding it easier than ever before to rise to great heights.

Te Puni has held the New Zealand championship without a break for the last five years, taking over in a sense from Terry Lomax (Canterbury) who dominated the event for more than three years beforehand. Lomax, the first New Zealander to

clear 7ft (2.15 m was in the field on Saturday. Although he did not finish in the first three, he made a very definite impact on the event. Jeff Brown (Otago), a very promising newcomer to the top ranks of high jumping, gained the runner-up position on Saturday, with Keith Olds (Canterbury) taking third position. Lomax was an unaccustomed fourth, but all three cleared the same height, 2.04 m. Lomax finished last of the three on a countback because he missed his first attempt at 2.00 m. The trio are all expected to be contenders for the New Zealand centennial championship in Wellington next March. But on the evidence of recent form, Te Puni looks set to win the national title for the sixth time and move closer to the record of eight successive wins held by the very talented Canterbury representative, Peter Wells.