Newspaper Article 2014 – Rona helped blaze women’s hurdles trail

Rona helped blaze women’s hurdles trail

Harrison Christian catches up with a Games track medallist of the 1930s and finds she’s kicking on in grand style, aged 97

RONA McCarthy isn’t your typical Commonwealth Games observer.

While she has enjoyed this year‘s Games on TV, Mrs McCarthy, 97, can boast of actually living them – and receiving a bronze medal for her pioneer hurdling skills.

That was 76 years ago, when the Games were known as the British Empire Games.

In the comfort of her apartment in a Havelock North retirement home, Mrs McCarthy, nee Tong, lays out her various sporting accolades and Games memorabilia. They gradually occupy her sofa.

Her team singlet is still in one piece, complete with silver fern, and she wears the official Games 1938 blazer for our interview.

Passing her hands over the memories, the lively old lady recalls a three-day voyage across the Tasman for the 1938 Games – there were no planes to Aussie in those days.

“It was the roughest trip I’ve ever been on. She [the ship] rocked all the way there.”

The stormy seas left the ship littered with broken crockery and busted windows.

“We were all sick. One night, we had to put on our uniforms to meet the Governor-General in the lounge, and we couldn’t rush back to our bedrooms quick enough .”

It is apparent her wit has remained intact for almost a century.

Born and raised in Hawke’s Bay, the Hastings High School old girl was just 21 when she represented the country in New Zealand’s first women’s hurdling team.

Women had only recently begun racing the hurdles and Mrs McCarthy spent most of her time in the lead-up to the Games at the public library, reading up on the discipline’s regulations.

It was a group effort – the girls relied on library books to tell them how far they should space each hurdle at the local athletics club. Mrs McCarthy recalls the trials for the New Zealand women’s hurdling team in Wellington, where her dreams were nearly quashed.

She literally fell at the first hurdle.

“I just fell over and had to be cleaned up and taken off.

“Poor old dad, sitting in the stand; he said he didn’t come 200 miles to see me fall over a hurdle, I could do that at home.”

She was given a second chance; she raced in the last heat of the day and won.

In Sydney, she ran to bronze in the 80m hurdles, with South Africa and Australia also on the podium, in first and second respectively.

After returning to New Zealand on a slightly less turbulent voyage, Mrs McCarthy continued competing and coaching.

She was also a basketball rep and coach for 14 years.

In 1979, she was awarded an MBE for services to sport, and has a letter from the Queen to prove it. She dismisses the honour as “just embarrassing”, however.

Although it’s been “a fair few years” since she jumped her last hurdle, she says she’s watched this year’s Games, which end tomorrow, on television at every opportunity, and admits it all seems a little surreal.

“I look at it and I think, oh gosh, did I do that?”

The Games operates on a different scale than it did all those years ago.

For example, this year there are 54 women in New Zealand’s Commonwealth Games team.

In 1938 there were seven.

“It was us and the swimmers. We were easy to look after.”

She’s looking at a photo of the women’s 1938 Games team disembarking the ship in Sydney.

Then she pulls out the suitcase she’s holding in the photo; it’s about the size of a shoebox.

But life was simpler in those days, says Mrs McCarthy, who turns 98 next month.

To her, age is just another hurdle.

“Poor old dad, sitting in the stand; he said he didn’t come 200 miles to see me fall over a hurdle, I could do that at home.” Rona McCarthy, former athlete

Photo captions – REMINISCING: Rona McCarthy, 97, still has her bronze medal and singlet from the 1938 British Empire Games in Sydney.
PHOTO/ WARREN BUCKLAND

UP AND OVER: Bronze medallist Rona McCarthy clear a hurdle at the 1938 British Empire Games.
PHOTO/ SUPPLIED

PROUD MOMENT: Rona McCarthy, right, receives her medal for the 80m hurdles in Sydney.
PHOTO/SUPPLIED