Belinda Coles Photography, Emily Chalk
For 40 years, she’s been the storyteller behind some of our country’s greatest sporting achievements –including bringing lucky America’s Cup red socks to public attention – and a pioneer in putting women’s sports on the map.
Suzanne McFadden, 57, was recently made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King’s Birthday Honours for her services to sports journalism and women. In the 1990s, she was the only female sports journalist in the NZ Herald newsroom, crafting stories on clunky typewriters and earning the nickname “Diva” for stamping her foot while fighting to get netball and minority sports on the front page.
These days, the proud nana of two grandsons freelances from home in Auckland’s Hobsonville, including writing for website LockerRoom and providing weekly sports commentary on TVNZ’s Breakfast show. While she’s tried to shine a light on women’s health stories in sports – and considers it a “revolution” that female athletes can now talk about periods and pain comfortably with their male coaches – Suzanne shares she has also quietly battled an insidious enemy within her own body.
Growing up on a farm in Wellsford, did sport play a big part in your childhood?
My dad Ray played rugby for North Auckland and my mum Delwyn was a really good hockey player, so they encouraged my younger sister and me to be active. Every day when we came home from school, we’d spend hours playing sport on our front lawn. Everything was a competition! I played squash and hockey, and was captain of the Girls’ First XI cricket team at Rodney College. Also kept scrapbooks for cricket, rugby, the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. I remember cutting out a newspaper story about runner Anne Audain and now we message each other all the time. It’s crazy! All these athletes I admired so much as a kid, like Yvonne Willering, Rod Dixon and Martin Snedden, and now I get to work with them.
Describe starting out as a court reporter?
I hated it. Every day was depressing. I was covering a jury case where the defendant threatened to kill me and it was the last straw.
So I went back to the office and said, “I’m not going back.”
They finally gave me the opportunity to work in sports. It was the late ’80s and a big deal for a woman to work in a sports newsroom. The 1990 Commonwealth Games was coming up and they needed more hands on deck. I was there when 14-year-old gymnast Nikki Jenkins won gold on the vault and her parents had been my PE teachers!
If your typewriter in the ’80s newsroom could talk, what would it tell us?
That men smoked at their desks and there was a wall of suggestive photos of female athletes with their skirts flying up! I went in there and ripped them all down.
Did you feel respected?
Hugely. I never felt like the odd one out with 10 other males. I was a sports writer like all of them. Sure, sometimes they would get me to send their Christmas cards for them if they were away on a cricket tour. But to me, it was a family.
What’s been the hardest sport to write about?
It wasn’t easy to start writing about yachting, which was then a very male-dominated sport. I had to prove I could tell their stories as well as anybody else and I was there for the long haul, especially following the Round the World racing and America’s Cups.
You were also a single mum with a little boy…
Yes, it was just me and my son Marc, who’s now 34. Thankfully, my wonderful parents helped out because I couldn’t have done it on my own. They sold a cow to buy a ticket for Marc, then aged three, to join me in San Diego for the 1995 America’s Cup, knowing I would be away for a while.
There was someone else you worked with who helped you with Marc and became very special…
I became best friends with NZ Herald colleague Eugene Bingham. He lived nearby and would always help us out, including driving us to hospital whenever Marc had an asthma attack. He offered to move in and take care of us, but he was 20 and I was 25. I knew he wanted to travel and I didn’t want him to give that up for us. So he moved to the UK and when he came back, we were still best mates.
Who made the next move?
It took me eight years to realise he was the one. At a journalism awards night, I surprised him on the dance floor by grabbing his tie and kissing him. We were engaged at the 2000 Sydney Olympics!
That’s a beautiful love story. When did you get married?
Pretty much straightaway. We really wanted to get married on the beach at Tāwharanui Peninsula with a back-up plan at a local brewery. I woke on our wedding morning and it was raining.
Eugene had been swimming at Tāwharanui and rang to say “It’s not looking good.” But I told him, “I’m not getting married in a pub. I’d rather get married in the bus we’ve hired, if we have to.”
So we arrived at the car park by the beach and our celebrant came over to me and said, “How would you feel about getting married in a cave?”
I told him that would be awesome! Unbeknown to me, Eugene, his groomsman and best woman had discovered this double-ended cave. They rolled up their wedding trousers and hand-dug trenches so the water drained out. Everybody stood inside the cave for our ceremony. It was perfect.
You’ve both discovered you have Māori heritage! Where are you on that journey?
Right at the beginning. It’s really lovely finding out from Dad’s cousins something I didn’t know growing up and that Eugene is going through it at the same time as me! I’m Tainui (Ngāti Pū), he’s Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Hineira). At Matariki, he took our youngest son Kieran, 23, to their marae for the first time. We also use te reo with our grandkids, Dan, five, and Benji, nearly two.
Many of your stories focus on women’s health. How did you cope with a high-pressure job while suffering from severe endometriosis?
I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t want to make it a big deal, but I was meant to go the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and I had to pull out at the last minute because my endo was so bad. It wasn’t just during my periods – it was pretty much three weeks out of four. I ended up having five surgeries, including a hysterectomy at 36 and a bowel resection to remove a growth almost blocking off my bowel. The pain was everywhere. On a bad day, it felt like somebody was sticking knives up my rectum. But menopause was the best thing because the endo has gone now.
So you didn’t use HRT because endo is fuelled by estrogen?
Exactly. I barely noticed I was going through menopause! But since then, I’ve developed something else called peripheral neuropathy – nerve pain in my arms, legs and head. I’ll get a sharp jolt across my forehead, then one through my Achilles. I’m on good nerve-blocking drugs to dampen it down, but I have flare-ups.
Oh, that’s rough. What’s been the hardest challenge?
I don’t drive at the moment because my brain thinks that when I’m at the wheel of a car, I’m doing something I shouldn’t be and sends pain back down. I’ve lost some of my independence. We’ve moved into a new community, closer to shops and public transport. For a while, I found it hard just travelling in a car, but now I trick my brain by learning and singing waiata, so it’s focused on that, which works! I have a wonderful pain psychologist.
Could having endo and peripheral neuropathy be related?
Yes. I think the endo has made my pain receptors super-sensitive. I do a lot of trying to retrain my brain. Also think becoming allergic to hair dye in my forties is connected. Going silver, which is one of the best things to happen! I can’t swim in a pool because the chlorine sets me off, so I’ve become really good at avoiding chemicals.
Finally, what are you most proud of?
Number one is all my gorgeous boys, of course. Then it’s writing two books – Striking Gold and Honey – mentoring young women sportswriters at LockerRoom and now capturing everyday people’s life stories through Reflections recordings, so their memories can be passed on down through generations.
