The weekend of 9-10th July 2016 saw NZGSA host the inaugural New Zealand National Championship in Kettlebell Sport. We were extremely fortunate to be able to host this competition on the main stage at the NZ Fitness Expo. What an experience.
Luckily we had the opening slot on both days which allowed us plenty of time to set up and get warmed up. There were the usual problems with computers and AV systems but the crew from the expo were extremely helpful and these were mostly mitigated. It was certainly interesting backstage as we were closely followed by the NZ Fitness Model Search and NABBA Bodybuilding Champs. Greased up bodybuilders will find all sorts of ways to abuse your poor kettlebells, so beware. All in all though they were a great bunch who had obviously worked hard to get to where they were and watching the show was a good way to pass the afternoon amidst the madness that these expos quickly become once you have done the rounds once.
On to the lifting! We opened on Saturday with Men’s Long Cycle for the lifters that were also competing in the Half Marathon, and Women’s One Arm Long Cycle. James, Heath and Lagi were up in the first flight and an interesting one it was. Lagi had been convinced to compete by her wonderful peers at Crossfit Manukau despite virtually no training, but this women is a natural at the sport and knocked out 42 reps with the 20kg bell, if only she would train more often! Heath continued his comeback to complete his first full LC set since injuring his shoulder, 88 reps at 20kg. The story of the day though was James Ross completing 53 reps LC at 32kg and making his Master of Sport numbers!
The second flight featured Victoria, Sheena and Gayle all competing with the 16kg bell. This was a fantastic flight to watch as all three battled it out for the top spot and all achieved PB’s on the day. Victoria finished strong to complete 100 reps while next to her Sheena was flying through her set and made her Candidate for Master of Sport numbers with a total of 121 reps! Unfortunately for Gayle her prep had been hampered by a back injury but there was no sign of injury as she ploughed through a personal best of 105 reps. Little did she know that with a late withdrawal due to illness she would be called upon to lift in Half Marathon the next day.
Sunday morning rolled around and it was time for Half Marathon! The first flight featured Heath, Vaughan and James, Heath and Vaughan with 24kg and James again lifting 32kg. The pace was steady right from the start with Heath and Vaughan going virtually rep for rep for most of the event to finish with 328 and 310 reps respectively. James was outstanding once again, making Master of Sport reps in the second event of the weekend with a great total of 274 reps.
The second flight was Women’s Half Marathon and also Men’s Long Cycle as first time competitor Jonny Almario was still to complete his set. Gayle and Sheena set about their 30 min set at a cracking pace and just didn’t let up. Those 12kg kettlebells looked entirely too light as they raced along to totals of 352 for Gayle and 406 for Sheena, although the relief when they put the bells down might suggest otherwise. Jonny nailed his debut competition at 16kg and pleased his coach Paul White with a perfectly paced set to finish with a strong 64 reps. We look forward to seeing Jonny’s progress as he develops in Kettlebell Sport.
Overall winners were awarded via the NZGSA Scoring System which abandons the standard formula of (Weight x Reps)/BW in favour of adding a coefficient to the kettlebell weight. These can be seen in the scorecard above. Without this coefficient Heath would have won the men’s LC with 88 reps at 20kg to beat James’ MS performance with 32kg. We can all agree that this would have been horribly misguided. So, the overall winners are:
Women’s One Arm Long Cycle – Sheena Jones
Women’s Half Marathon – Sheena Jones
Men’s Long Cycle – James Ross
Men’s Half Marathon – James Ross
NZGSA would like to thank those who volunteered their time to judge sets and help organise, Pic’s Peanut Butter for sponsoring the event, Crossfit Manukau for loan of equipment, Kalle Pyykkonen for a great scoreboard program, NZ Fitness Expo for giving us this opportunity, Jad Marinovic at Kettlebell Athletica and KetAcademy for providing ranking tables, and all those lifters who competed in the inaugural NZGSA National Championship. If you are reading this and didn’t manage to make it to compete this year make sure you register for our soon to be announced North and South Island Champs and book your time for next year’s Nationals, we need you to help grow this wonderful sport in NZ.