New Zealand’s 2026 Commonwealth Games team: Meet the Kiwi athletes heading to Glasgow

New Zealand’s fastest woman is the only Kiwi or Oceania-region female sprinter to run 100m in under 11 seconds. Zoe, 28, is raring to go for her second Commonwealth Games, with the nine-times consecutive national titleholder in great recent form, making the Diamond League podium at the start of her campaign.

“I’m in good shape,” says Zoe.

“I just need to keep refining.”

Stratford-born Zoe grew up in Taranaki, competing like many Kiwi kids at the Colgate Games. She soon outpaced her childhood competition and has gone on to set 28 New Zealand records.

In the marquee 100m event, where success is measured in milliseconds, Zoe just missed making the Paris Olympics final two years ago. She was also an agonising 0.01 seconds off a medal at the World Athletics Indoor Championships. Four years ago in Birmingham, she placed fifth, but she has wind beneath her wings after running a personal best time of 10.94 last year.

To put that in context, Zoe is racing in territory no other New Zealand woman has entered. It is also more than 100 years since a New Zealand man made an Olympic 100m final, when Sir Arthur Porritt, who went on to be Governor-General, secured a bronze medal in 1924. Zoe will carry Kiwis’ hopes proudly.

It’s easy to forget the leading distance freestyler is just 22. Erika made her international debut at age 14, when she was a Dunedin schoolgirl racking up age-group records.

At her 2021 Olympics debut in Tokyo, the Kavanagh College head girl reached the 400m final. By the 2022 Birmingham Games, Erika was unluckily just outside the medals in two world-class fields, having qualified fastest for the 400m.

Erika set the New Zealand record for the distance in 2023, becoming only the fifth woman in history to break the four-minute barrier. A year later,
she became the first Kiwi to win a World Championship swimming title, again in 400m.

At the Paris Olympics, Erika qualified for four finals, finishing fourth in the 400m. A starting block disqualification in 2025 meant she was unable to defend her world champs title.

Erika moved to Auckland last year to train with national coach Graham Hill and hopes this will propel her to success at the Games.

“I’m just quietly backing myself and we’ll see what happens,” she says.

Artistic gymnast Courtney, 27, is ready to turn her Glasgow experiences from heartbreak to dream comeback. Just days before the 2014 Games, an injury forced the then 15-year-old out of competition.

Two years later, the Christchurch-raised athlete attended the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics as the youngest New Zealand team member. She finished 13th on vault and received a US College scholarship.

Courtney has been a four-time World Cup finalist, but an Achilles injury in 2020 and the Covid pandemic made her decide to retire and focus on her medical studies.

With the 2026 Games initially planned for Australia, she returned to training after a five-year break. The switch in venue didn’t faze her – it offered Courtney an opportunity to overcome the disappointment of 12 years ago by finally taking her place with the Kiwi team in Glasgow, before beginning a role as junior doctor next year.

The most successful track cyclist ever produced in New Zealand has two Olympic gold medals and three Commonwealth gold medals to her name at age 26.

So no pressure then as Ellesse enters the velodrome in Glasgow, highly fancied to collect more. But the whole 19-strong cycle team is stacked with talent, including Ally Wollaston and Bryony Botha, and Para racers Devon Briggs and Emma Foy, so expect plenty of Kiwi presence on the podium.

Christchurch-born Ellesse grew up in Wānaka and moved to cycling hub Cambridge as a teenager. Under the watchful eye of her father and coach Jon Andrews – a former Olympic track cyclist and double bronze medallist at the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games – and mother Angela Mote-Andrews, once an international mountain bike rider, Ellesse transitioned from junior standout to her first Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in 2018.

Twenty years after Sarah Ulmer set the nation alight as our first woman to win an Olympic cycling gold at the Athens Games, Ellesse bagged two at the 2024 Paris Olympics, along with a team silver. This haul put her in a select group of Kiwis to have claimed three medals at one Olympics, joining kayak greats Dame Lisa Carrington, Ian Ferguson and Paul McDonald.

In 2025, Ellesse broke the world record in a relatively new event, the women’s 1km time trial, becoming the first woman to go under 1 min 5s. “I love going as fast as I can,” she affirms.

For one of our most successful Para athletes, heading to Glasgow is a special thrill.

“It’s so surreal purely because I didn’t think I would even have the opportunity to go to the Commonwealth Games,” says Anna, 29.

The Dunedin long-jumper-turned-sprinter has three Paralympics gold medals to her name, but says joining the wider New Zealand Team will make this event particularly special.

Born without her right hand, sports-mad Anna played netball and basketball as a child before embarking on Para athletics, winning her first long jump gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 at 19. She defended her title in Tokyo in 2021 and added a running gold.

“People might take inspiration from what I do… this is another amazing avenue that maybe captures some more people that haven’t seen me compete before.”

Competing in Glasgow holds a special place in the heart of the then-Moira de Villiers, with the Scottish city being the judo athlete’s Games debut in 2014.

Moira won a silver medal and fellow competitor-turned-coach Jason Koster won bronze, with the pair marrying two years later.

Now 36 and a Christchurch-based mother of two, Moria says, “Wearing the fern and competing for the New Zealand Team is something I never take for granted. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend multiple Games, but the pride, passion and drive to represent my country never gets old.”

This will be the highly ranked athlete’s third Commonwealth Games. Moira secured a bronze medal in Birmingham and has been to two Olympic Games. All that is missing from her career is filling her set of Games medals with that elusive gold.

Will this be the year 25-year-old pole vaulter Imogen steps fully into the exacting sport’s spotlight, long occupied in local eyes by popular 2016 Olympic bronze medallist Eliza McCartney?

With a personal best of 4.81m under her belt in June, Imogen, who claimed bronze in Birmingham, goes into the Glasgow Games in red-hot form.

“I will just try to keep building from here and see where it will take me.”

The North Shore athlete also secured her first podium finish at a Diamond League event in Europe last month, where a resurgent Eliza, 28, also placed in a later round. The women may be rivals for medals, but they’ve trained together and share a childhood bond from belonging to Takapuna Athletics Club, and attending the same high school, with Imogen saying she chose Takapuna Grammar because her idol went there.
Both were finalists at the 2024 Paris Olympics, along with Kiwi Olivia McTaggart.

“It is amazing to have three athletes making consistently global finals and all pushing each other to be better,” says Imogen.

“It brings the best out of us and the most competitive side of us.”

Bowler Selina has been redefining what the sedate sport looks like for more than a decade, from making her Games debut as a 20-year-old to rocking Raybans in competition in Birmingham in 2022 and being World Series number one last year.

The outgoing 32-year-old is a three-time bronze medallist, who loves the tradition and teamwork of being in the Black Jacks. She took up bowls because her parents Irene and Phil played, and was soon hooked.

Selina will again form a pair with Katelyn Inch, after the duo’s bronze in Birmingham. Selina was also in the four that claimed bronze, with her first medal also in fours, at her first outing in 2014.

Canterbury farm girl Katelyn, 30, is at her third Games. She won the national singles title in 2020 and was part of the New Zealand team that won the world champs in 2023.

Both women moved to Australia for competition, with Katelyn still a paramedic on the Sunshine Coast and marketer Selina having returned to live north of Auckland.