🏃♂️ Just for fun.
If anyone deserves a ‘free from expectation and pressure’ pass at the Bay Radiology NZ Schools Triathlon Championships at the end of the month, it’s Sam Ruthe.
Of course, the 16-year-old track phenom won’t be able to avoid the spotlight at Mount Maunganui, not after the year he’s had quietly becoming one of World Athletics hottest commodities.
But the teen’s coach, Craig Kirkwood, is adamant. The Year 12 Tauranga Boys’ College prodigy will compete in the senior boys’ triathlon on March 26 first and foremost for fun.
“For Sam, he’s finished his track season, it’s his off-season, so he just wanted to have a crack at NZ Schools. There’s not any hope or thinking of him being in contention, it’s just to have fun, a low key hit out,” Kirkwood said of the freshly-minted senior men’s 1500m national champion.
“It’s on his doorstep and it’s just a bit of fun. We don’t want a lot of pressure lumped on it.”
The obvious issue with that? You don’t break a plethora of national and international records on the track without being a racer at heart, including becoming the first 15-year-old to crack the sub four-minute mile mark in Auckland last March before breaking the NZ record with a 3min 48.88sec indoor effort in Boston in January.
Even Kirkwood accepts that. Hayden Wilde’s former mentor also knows there is zero chance of the other U19 boys making it easy for Ruthe, clearly the best runner bound for the Mount, especially in the sprint’s draft legal bike leg.
“All the other kids know him and they’ll work hard to keep him away. But he’s a competitor and he’ll want to race. But at the end of the day it’s just a bit of fun.”
It will be Ruthe’s second crack at the NZ Schools Champs on home soil in three years. In 2024, he placed runner-up in the U16 boys’ division behind Saint Kentigern College’s Alex Bishop.
The bigger picture for Ruthe is a 12-day international odyssey in July-August. That’ll be headlined by a shot at the mile – reinstated for the first time in 60 years – at the condensed Commonwealth Games in Glasgow before he focuses on the 1500m at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
“We’ve always kept an element of riding in his training anyway and he used to be quite a good swimmer,” Kirkwood said of the triathlete within Ruthe.
“We just want to keep the training mix during the track off-season.”
Ruthe’s entry adds further gravitas to the Bay Radiology NZ Schools Triathlon Championships which also includes regional Mixed Relay action on March 27, as well as a Tri NZ elite super sprint trial around midday on the March 26.
There’s still time to enter if you haven’t already signed up. Simply follow this link.
