High jumper Te Puni, at the Crossroads

Tu Tangata, Issue 34, 1 February 1987, Page 16

High jumper Te Puni, at the Crossroads

By Michael Romanos

Has athlete Roger Te Puni stagnated, reached his peak or will he achieve greater heights and goals in the future? The 22-year-old Te Puni has been New Zealand’s top high jumper since he was 18, winning five national senior titles from 1982 to 1986. He has a New Zealand record clearance of 2.18 metres (7ft 2in) which he achieved last June at the Pacific Conference Games in California.

Te Puni first cleared 2 metres (6ft 7in) way back in 1980 and he arched over the bar at 2.14 metres early in 1983 to become only the second Kiwi and first as a junior to break the seven foot barrier. But while he improved 14cm in three years, he has only managed to add another 4cm to his best competition jump over the last three years. The 6ft 4in Wellington-born and Tawa College educated Te Puni admitted he has been in a lull over the past few years but he’s adamant he hasn’t reached his peak yet and he’s sure

better things are still to come where he can realise the potential he showed in particular back in 1983.

In explaining and analysing his career to date, Te Puni told me that after he had cleared 2.14 mat Newtown Stadium (on that shocking surface that was the Newtown track at the time) he

went to Australia and won the Aussie national junior title, jumping 2.15 m and came second on the count-back for the Australian senior title. “So I was riding high,” he says. “During the winter of 1983 I had my first real good build-up under my coach Mike Beable. My weights, bounding and speed were great and consequently I started the 1983-84 season in great shape. “In the first jump of the season I cleared 2.16 m at the new Waitemata Indoor Centre and then travelled to Taiwan in a New Zealand team of four

athletes and beat two American Olympians Ben Fields and Milton Goode. I came third in pouring rain and cleared 2.15 m.

“Things were looking good for me. I had immedate visions of clearing 2.22 m which was the NZ qualifying standard for the 1984 Los Angeles

Olympics.” In November 1983 at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium, Te Puni cleared a national record 2.17 m to supercede his arch rival, Terry Lomax of Christchurch.

Chasing a decent surface and competition, Te Puni shifted to Christchurch to train and compete at the QE2 Park. Things then started to sour. Though Te Puni cleared ten 7ft competition jumps in Christchurch, without his mentor and coach Beable for motivation and advice, Te Puni wasn’t able to click.

“It was a good move for facilities and competition but a bad move in that I was lacking a person of Mike’s ability to support me. It was make or break and I broke because I didn’t qualify for the Olympics.” Te Puni shifted back to Wellington for the 1984-85 season but further set-

backs persisted. Beable had retired from coaching, leaving a host of top quality and young Wellington athletes to squander their potential. The Newtown Park track was still substandard.

Te Puni said the Newtown Park bitumen track and high jump apron was an absolute disaster.

“You would get more spring out of the road surface on Lambton Quay,” he said.

So after a ho-hum season Te Puni shifted this time to Auckland to work under the national high jump coach Bish McWatt.

In June 1986 came his 2.18 m which was 3cm better than any other New Zealander had achieved. In trying for 2.21 m at the Pacific Conference Games in the same competition, Te Puni had the mortification to pivot his body over the bar and actually stand up only to see the bar gently topple over.

During the PCG he beat the two top Australians and thus earned the top ranking in Australasia. He was considered a certainty for the Oceania team at the World Cup in Canberra but somehow John Atkinson of Australia who had cleared 2.28 m in 1984 was chosen instead. Atkinson who was under an injury cloud, should never have been selected and he cleared a miserable 2.10 m at Canberra to finish last in the field.

Te Puni said he was told by the American record holder (2.36 m) Jimmy Howard that he (Te Puni) had the strength, speed and potential to clear 2.28 m and should be looking for an American scholarship or international competition.

“I regret it now but I turned down a four-year athletics scholarship at the University of Washington in 1983 because it had come too quickly in my career after I had competed at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games and cleared 2.13 m as an 18-year-old (finishing ahead of both the Aussie competitors).

“By 1985 I couldn’t get a scholarship I had tried for, and money was a problem for my competing overseas. Over the years I’ve received S4OOO in grants from the NZ Sports Foundation and some domestic travel assistance through the national squad but in the meantime I’ve spent all my available cash on training and competiting and I’ve lost job promotion opportunities and wages.”

Te Puni was a strong prospect for the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. He only needed to clear 2.19 m to qualify but he developed a knee tendon injury which today is still not cleared with his specialist reluctant to operate. As well, Te Puni was not 100 percent in tune with the coaching methods of McWatt.

“It’s my belief that Bish bases his methods on strength training whereas that doesn’t really suit me. I think I need to concentrate more on speed and explosiveness. Mike (Beable) sees me as a power jumper who should develop more as a speed jumper. I haven’t really developed the technique of speed jumping because Mike was the only guy in New Zealand who could teach me. He took me from 1.85 m to 2.17 m in only three seasons.”

Te Puni cleared 2.14 m whilst injured in an effort to qualify for Edinburgh but he was not selected. The winning leap at the 1986 Commonwealth Games for the bronze medal was 2.14 m achieved by Canadian Alain Mettellus whom Te Puni has beaten in three out of three competitions.

Late last year when this interview took place, Te Puni was in a quandary. He was working in Auckland as a hospital orderly in order to have more available time for training but he was trying to get a job in Wellington now that the Newtown Park track was at long last upgraded and now had the best high jump apron and track surface in the country. His winter training had been curtailed through his knee injury which had inhibited full pressure in jumping and weight training.

Te Puni said he was hopeful of coaxing Beable into resuming coaching him.

“I lack motivation and Mike simply gets me going. If he says be somewhere at a certain time, I’m there. I’ve got to decide whether I can jump whilst carrying an injury and try qualifying for the 1987 World Champs in Rome or have an operation and give most of the 1986-87 season away.

“But I want to realise my potential. I want to achieve 2.30 m. Dwight Stones cleared a world record of 2.32 m at aged 22 in 1976 and then he didn’t improve until 1984 in the USA Olympic trials when he cleared a USA record 2.34 m at aged 31.”

Te Puni also competes successfully in the 110 m hurdles event and at the 1986 national championships he came home fourth, clocking a hand-timed 14.6 seconds.

Te Puni whose father is Mita Raremoana Kariki Te Puni of the Ngati Porou (ex Ruatoria) tribe, says he studied Maori at Tawa College.

“A lot of people think of me as a Greek or Italian because I look a little Continental and because so few Maori

people have been dedicated to athletics.”

Te Puni says the only other Maori high jumper he has seen at national level is Peter Ranganui of the West Coast North Island centre who cleared 1.95 m as a colt (under 18) at last year’s national colts championships.

From a family of a sister and two brothers, Roger is the sole national identity in the family.

Te Puni is a likeable, perky and outwardly confident person who hit the top of athletics in New Zealand quicker than almost anyone else in the sport’s history here.

Te Puni said his meteoric rise hasn’t been too quick, “but I’ve had the wind taken out of me- making the Commonwealth Games at 18 (the second youngest in the overall New Zealand team) and then missing out of the Games at 22.”

“Overall, highjumpers are treated fairly poorly. We get ripped-off in some places. Sometimes running events interfere with the high jump. On occasions last season, officials in Auckland turned off the lights at the Mt Smart Stadium mid-way through the high jump event. Some officials couldn’t give a damn about field events like the high jump. But actually it is one of the most dramatic and exciting of athletic events.”

To prove that Te Puni is an “athlete” and not simply a high jumper, in 1984 he competed in the Canterbury decathlon championships and scored 3,800 points after the first day and was heading for 7000-plus points.

Finally, the typical Te Puni high jump is: running in from right to left, taking a 30 metre approach and running on an acute curve. He finishes his run parallel with the bar before taking off on his left foot in a Fosbury Flop technique which is driving off the free knee, arching the back and ticking the

heels over the bar. Easy try it sometime.