Happy Sam, Fast Sam

Words & photography by Scott Yeoman

From Pāpāmoa, to Paris. Samuel Tanner is on the move and has about 500 days of preparation left before the biggest event of his career.

The 22-year-old Olympian of Ngāpuhi descent is incredibly fast on foot over a middle distance — and is only getting faster — but, as it turns out, he is not in any great rush when it comes to his downtime. And that could be the secret to Sam’s success.

You might have seen him cruising along Pāpāmoa Beach Road on his motorbike this summer, searching for swell. He surfs a fair bit. He also fishes a fair bit. Sam has a lot of fun, actually, for a professional athlete with medals on his mind. “My coach Craig always says, ‘Happy Sam is fast Sam,’ and so I think if I’m doing a bunch of those extracurriculars, my life’s really balanced.”

So just how quick is he?

Sam can run 1500m in 3 minutes and 31.34 seconds. He set that personal best time — which is also the second fastest in New Zealand history — in the men’s 1500m final at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games last year. Go back and watch the video of him competing in that race, in front of a packed stadium on the world stage. It’s a delight.

The camera pans to Sam on the start line and he taps his chest and does a quick pūkana. He’s all smiles and waves. At the finish, he’s the same — jumping around, arms in the air, immediately congratulating the winner, putting his arm around him, sharing his joy. Sam tells reporters afterwards “I’m frothing” and then declares himself the “happiest sixth place getter ever”. He is a finalist at this year’s Halberg Awards for New Zealand’s Favourite Sporting Moment of the Year for that Birmingham brilliance.

If Sam’s 1500m time doesn’t mean much to you, if you’re struggling to relate, then how about this — he can run from the Mount surf club to the top of Mauao in 8 minutes and 20 seconds. It’s not that uncommon to see him running the streets, beaches and gravel tracks of Tauranga, his long curly locks tied back and a bright orange or yellow blur propelling him forward with an almost annoying amount of ease and efficiency. If you’re unsure it’s him, just look for the moustache.

When Sam hasn’t been competing at the Tokyo Olympics or winning big races all around the world over the past couple of years, like the Oceania Athletic Championships in Australia or the Prefontaine Classic in the United States, he has been here. Pāpāmoa has always been his home and his base and he doesn’t want that to change, despite the amount of time he is spending at events overseas.

“I think for some athletes it wouldn’t work,” Sam says. “But I think because I grew up in Pāpāmoa, and kind of the way my upbringing was, it means that I can refresh and recharge really, really well when I’m home.” He spends quality time with his wife Melissa and their family and friends, he surfs, he fishes, he rides his motorbike, and he trains — a lot. Being home is no holiday.

Sam’s coach Craig Kirkwood is also based in Tauranga and guides him through a strict training programme. In the offseason, when Sam is building up fitness, he can run up to 140km over the course of a week.

A relatively new addition to Sam’s training schedule, since he arrived back from the Commonwealth Games last year, is strength and conditioning and gym work at the University of Waikato Adams Centre for High Performance in Mount Maunganui. This state-of-the-art training centre, operated by Bay Venues, is situated on the outskirts of Blake Park and has become a one-stop shop for athletes and teams preparing for competition at the highest level.

It is home to both New Zealand rugby sevens teams, the Bay of Plenty Steamers and Bay of Plenty Volcanix, as well as North Island-based Black Caps, the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic, and the Adams Academy — a development programme with more than 100 aspiring and established athletes across 27 sporting codes and counting. The sheer diversity of athletes training at the centre on any given day, from a lawn bowler, kickboxer and rally driver to rowers, cricketers and rugby players, has made it a multidisciplinary hub for idea sharing and healthy competition between codes.

It is in that motivating, interactive environment that Sam is now training three times a week, meeting new people, making new friends. “It makes it so much more exciting,” he says. Take the gym music, for example, the eclectic playlist just a small taste of the energy of his training mates. “It can go from Blink-182, punk rock, to country, to like techno in one session,” Sam says with a laugh. There is a team of strength and conditioning coaches available at the centre, as well as a dietitian and sports psychologist, and the University of Waikato’s onsite sports science laboratory has a full array of testing equipment and an environmental chamber (one of only two in the country) that helps athletes better prepare for international competitions in varying climates and altitudes. And all of this in one of New Zealand’s most popular holiday spots, only a few minutes from the beach.

Unsurprisingly, the Adams Centre is becoming an increasingly popular spot for international teams to spend some time, with the All Blacks, Wallabies, New Zealand Warriors, Western Force, Chiefs Manawa, and Irish and French rugby sevens teams all training there recently. The Dutch women’s football team will also be training at the Adams Centre during the FIFA Women’s World Cup later this year.

“We get told as a centre that our vibe sets us apart from the other high-performance centres in the country,” says head strength and conditioning coach Loretta Hogg. “When you come in, the mindset of the people that are working here and coaching here is always positive. So, I think that bounces off everyone and you walk into a gym and you’ve got development athletes alongside the professionals. That’s not the norm in the high-performance world.”

Sam’s first international event of the year starts any day now — he races in Boston, New York and Bathurst (Australia) in February — and his season will culminate with the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary in August and the 2023 Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon in September. Then it’s the final push to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

← State-of-the-art facilities aside, Samuel is inspired by the sheer diversity of athletes he meets at the Adams Centre.

In amongst all of that, Sam will come home to Pāpāmoa, as he has always done, to find that all-important balance, to refresh and recharge and gear up for the biggest event of his career. “I think I’ve always had the goal of medalling in Paris. That’s kind of been my big thing.” uowadamshpc.co.nz

His goals may be getting bigger, but the secret to Sam’s success won’t change. And that’s because, whether he’s in Pāpāmoa or Paris, happy Sam is fast Sam.