McCaw Digs Deep For Cure Kids

Rob Howard / 05.04.2016

There has been a lot of press around Godzone this year, much of it due the fact former All Black Rugby captain Richie McCaw is taking part.

McCaw is a rugby superstar, the most capped and successful player ever from a country which venerates its rugby players, so his participation at Godzone is a big deal; for the race, for him and in New Zealand. Its national news in a way adventure racing never normally is, so it’s new territory, which is both a great opportunity and a little uncomfortable as celebrity status does not sit easily with the low-key, Corinthian ethos of adventure racing.

There have been comments on kiwi forums saying the coverage is too focussed on Richie, or that it’s not really news what he does for sport now he’s retired, especially if it lasts all week and not much happens!

That’s going to happen when AR is exposed to a brighter spotlight as it’s a difficult sport to understand and the vast majority of those reading about McCaw’s efforts with Team Cure Kids will have no real comprehension of what he is attempting. They really won’t have any idea how hard an expedition adventure race is, what he is putting himself through … or how brave and committed his decision to take part was.

As a newly retired sporting superstar McCaw surely has plenty of options when it comes to choosing how to spend his time. He’s getting his helicopter pilots license and is a director of Christchurch Helicopters, and endorsement, personal appearance and speaking engagements must be easy to come by and lucrative.

Yet, a year after his retirement he’s gone out on a limb in a totally different kind of sport, and one with little public recognition. Having trained and shaped his body for 80 minutes of intense and very physical activity at the highest level, he opted to take on a week-long endurance event with many skills he had little or no experience of, and to some extent to put himself in the hands of his 3 team mates. 

Throwing himself into the country’s hardest expedition adventure race was a real leap into the unknown and after a career of supreme success the chance of failing was pretty high. (Or still is, as he’s not got to the finish line yet.)  High profile sporting ‘celebs’ don’t often take on genuinely hard challenges, certainly not ones where they might face headlines about being beaten by a bunch of amateurs if they drop out – it wouldn’t be good for the image profile!

I doubt it’s in his nature to think about failing though, and he was inspired to take part by Rugby New Zealand’s support of the Cure Kids charity and their relationship with Godzone over the past few years. They have had teams in the past and he is racing with Rob Nicol, the head of the NZ Rubgy Players Association.

He’s obviously taken the race seriously, as you might expect from an elite athlete. The team have been training together for several months and it’s interesting to look at photos of Richie as a player and compare them to how he looks now he’s competing in an adventure race.  He’s lost a lot of weight and his whole body shape looks different. It needed to as a 17 stone, heavily muscled frame isn’t ideal for AR.

That training and preparation, along with his natural sporting ability has paid off and 4 days into the race the team is going well. They are currently in 20th position, well ahead of the cut-off and some experienced international teams – and they’ve raised almost $300,000 NZ so far.

So far Richie has said he’s enjoyed some of the mountain biking, though he’s not so keen on the trekking, and at the last transition he said his former Rugby colleagues had, “Got it easy!”  That is quite a statement coming from him.

The Cure Kids team are currently on the final, tough trekking stage over Mount Owen. They then have a bike ride and an ocean paddle to complete to get to the finish line, where they are sure to be greeted by a media scrum.  

McCaw will certainly get more media coverage than the winners, any other teams, or his team mates, but they won’t mind as they know better than anyone just how hard the challenge he has taken on is, and how much adventure racing will benefit from his taking part.

You can donate online to Cure Kids at https://everydayhero.co.nz/event/godzoneadventureforcurekids

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