By Suzanne McFadden on Newsroom…
Just four women are coaching Kiwi athletes in Tokyo. Suzanne McFadden talks to Angie Dougal, coach of our trampoline bronze medallist, and Jo Aleh, who’s coached a sailor with a broken leg.
They have must have made quite a sight on Saturday afternoon. Inside a car parked up outside the Olympic village, Angie Dougal and her trampoline athlete Dylan Schmidt – with his gleaming Olympic bronze medal around his neck – screaming at a phone screen.
As the two Kiwis left the Ariake Gymnastics Centre, where Schmidt had just become the first Kiwi to win an Olympic trampolining medal, Dougal had texted ahead to the New Zealand team and told them to delay the rousing haka that’s become tradition welcoming back medallists to the camp.
Because just as they pulled up outside the village, the Black Ferns Sevens kicked off their gold medal match against France. And Dougal had special reason to want to watch it.
Outside her role as Schmidt’s coach, she also works with the Black Ferns, as their player development manager at the New Zealand Rugby Players’ Association.
“So, yeah, it was a great day,” Dougal says, no doubt smiling under her mask.
Read the full article on Newsroom here.
