At only 14, Queenstown athlete Siena Mackley recently announced herself on the national stage — but she’s too young to qualify for the international one.
The Wakatipu High student stunned the field by winning the under-20 women’s division of the New Zealand mountain running champs on Queenstown’s Deer Park Heights.
The result qualified her for the worlds in Thailand in November, however she’d have to be at least 16 to go.
It’s ‘‘a bit of a bugger’’, her Queenstown Athletic coach Neville Britton says, as she’d have gone with training buddy Sarah Douglas, 38, as her chaperone, after the latter qualified by winning the senior women’s title.
Siena only entered after ‘‘a bit of enthusiastic encourage ment’’ from Britton: ‘‘I said, ‘you’ve got nothing to lose’, and then she won it, miraculously, ahead of some pretty formidable runners that are nationally ranked on the track and cross country and stuff like that.’’
She completed the ‘‘gut-buster’’ 5.8km course in 31min 16sec.
Britton says Siena’s ‘‘such a humble kid, I don’t think she thinks she’s as good as she actually is’’.
‘‘She’s got a huge future if she’s winning events like this.’’
He puts down a lot of her success to her training environment — the terrain she runs on and the ‘‘tight little squad’’ she trains with.
This includes Douglas, Jude Deaker, 15, who was sixth-fastest U20 male, and Britton’s son Benjamin, 20, who finished 11th in the senior men’s race.
‘‘All these athletes … their commitment and work ethic, that’s made them what they are,’’ Britton says.
‘‘I’m only liable for 10%, I’m just the adviser.’’
He says Douglas, who won the women’s title — on an 8.6km course — for the third time, is ‘‘an absolute beast, she doesn’t even know what a hill is, she’s like an e-bike’’.
Remarkably, she’d only just recovered from Covid, and two days out was ‘‘coughing like a 30-a-day smoker’’, Britton says.
“She ran really well, but she would have done even better if she hadn’t had Covid.”
