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We all have our favourite Olympic moments.
For Natalie Tong, it was finding herself standing next to Usain Bolt during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 games.
Ashley Abbott’s was “Super Saturday” in 2008 when New Zealand won five medals, while Evelyn Williamson’s was when she lined up to represent her country in the triathlon back in 2000.
But what you might not know is the sheer amount of dedication, passion and hard work that goes in to making those magic moments happen.
The Weekly chats to four members of the New Zealand Olympic Committee about just how we get our team all the way to Rio.
Kereyn Smith
Chief Executive Officer
“Day to day, I’m responsible for everything that’s happening across all of our teams and making sure that overall things are tracking well. When you’re leading into an Olympic Games, everything gets very detailed and compressed, so at the moment, being busy is a bit of an understatement! We’re responsible for getting thousands of little things right, so it’s certainly demanding across the organisation.
They’re hugely long days and I’m at work more than I am at home at the moment! It can be quite challenging. It takes a lot of your personal energy, but you know, I find I get a lot of uplift from that. It’s exciting, it’s inspiring and we have a great time with a lot of people who are proud to be doing what they’re doing. It’s a pretty cool job.
Actually, when I was growing up, I never knew jobs like this existed! But this is my dream job. It’s fabulous because it covers everything I’m passionate about, so it’s pretty special. I’ve always been involved in sport, whether in a professional or voluntary capacity. Netball was a big part of my life for a long time, I was on the board of Netball New Zealand and I was also the vice president of the International Netball Federation.
Professionally, I started out as a PE teacher, moving into sports management and then into various leadership roles. I was appointed to this job about five years ago.
There are always challenges in this job, whether they’re the sorts of things you can predict or the ones that you get sideswiped with on a day-to-day basis. But we have to be resilient about that because many things are beyond our control. It’s just having the right mindset to be proactive.
The biggest piece of advice I’d give to women in business is that it really helps if you’re doing something you love, because getting out of bed in the morning is so much easier. And the reality is, if you’re going to progress in anything, you have to be prepared to work hard, be resilient and take the issues as opportunities.
So I don’t think there are any magical formulas, but certainly if you find your passion and believe in yourself, you’re likely to land in the right place.”
Natalie Tong
Team Services Manager of Operations
“Accreditations, uniform, medical, travel insurance, freight, accommodation –those are just some of the things my team and I are responsible for. I mean, I’m not sure if you’ve ever had to figure out how to get things like horses, kayaks and bikes to Brazil before, but that’s what we do!
We want to make the team as comfortable as possible and ensure that they don’t have to worry about anything apart from doing well in their sports. That’s what drives me most – making sure I’m doing my bit so the athletes can just get out there and succeed.
My job starts as soon as the host city is announced – seven years out from the start of the games. So you’re trying to secure accommodation well before teams are announced – meaning you have to work off assumptions for a while and be very flexible!
We’ve packed 21,000 items of uniform in individual athlete bags and sent three 40-foot containers to Rio so far filled with 50 bean bags, 20 metres of artificial turf, 80 throw pillows to decorate the athletes’ apartments, 3750 cartons of UP&GO, 450 containers of sunscreen – not to mention tons of insect repellent!
Coming from a sporty background – I was at Basketball NZ beforehand – I’ve always loved playing and being involved in sport. I realised early on that I didn’t have the physical prowess to succeed as an athlete! But it’s exciting to be able to support our athletes and I consider it a huge, huge privilege.”
Evelyn Williamson
Team Services Coordinator
“As a former Olympian – I represented New Zealand in triathlon at the Sydney 2000 Olympics – I know how important it is for things behind the scenes to be sorted. But when I was competing, I didn’t fully appreciate what went on because everything was done so well that I didn’t have to think about any of it!
My job is accommodation, so I’m making sure the rotation of apartments works and that kind of thing. It’s important to make the surroundings feel Kiwi and homely – we have a backyard in the athletes village, so we’ll take things such as sun umbrellas, a BBQ and Pineapple Lumps to remind everyone of home.
The Olympic Village itself is crazy – it feels like Disneyland at the time! It’s bright, colourful and loud, and you’re around 10,000 other people at the peak of their careers, so it almost seems like there’s no normal people in the world! There’s tall basketballers, tiny gymnasts, huge weightlifters. And you get starstruck – I had lunch next to Venus Williams.
We’re not rocket scientists, we’re not inventing penicillin, but we’re just trying to do a lot of simple little jobs well. And this is a great job for an old hack of an athlete!”
Ashley Abbott
Public Affairs and Communications Director
“The first Olympic Games I went to was Beijing in 2008. I had a two-year-old and a three-year-old at the time, and I look back now and think, ‘How on earth did I manage that?!’
But eight years later, I still really love what I do – sharing inspirational stories about our athletes, our history and our country. I work with Kiwi journalists to make sure they have everything that they need – there’s 25,000 members of the press going to Rio.
Also, along with Alex Spence and Alex Cooper, who work with me, I promote the athletes who have been selected by working to get their stories – and the historic moments of our Olympic history – out there.
I have always loved promoting New Zealand, generally speaking, because I’m very proud of our country and what we’ve achieved. And I’ve also been involved with sporting events for a long time.
As a working mum, I do find that challenges do crop up, but I hope that there’s equally been good things too. My kids have grown up with some amazing opportunities. And, of course, my husband and Mum have helped a lot – you can’t do these things by yourself!”
WATCH: NZ Rugby Sevens star Tyla Nathan-Wong prepares for the Rio Olympics
