LILY ANA TAITIMU - The Kalamazoo Girl

September 2009

Lily Taitimu started Short Track Ice Speed Skating in 2005 at the age of 5.  Lily quickly progressed in 2005 with her first competition in a Novice grade for first year skaters. She then decided to compete in the Primary Grade for Under 7 winning the South Islands and the NZ National Titles.

2006 saw Lily improve in the Primary Grade taking 1st Place in the Canterbury Champs, South Island Champs and NZ Nationals.  In 2006 Lily worked hard to improve her skating and her times and in that year she broke 3 New Zealand Records in the 111m, 222m and 333m.

2007 Lily then had to move up a grade, skating against her peers whom were 2 years older than herself.  She maintained her times very well and worked to get better and to keep up with the older skaters.  In that year she achieved well with a 2nd at Canterbury Champs, 2nd at South Island Champs and 3rd at NZ Nationals.  In this year Lily traveled to Australia and skated at their National Championships in the Under 9 grade where she took 1st Place.

2008 Lily improved once again with her skating skills.  She Won all Championships in 2008 (Canterbury Champs, South Island Champs and NZ Nationals).  Once again Lily traveled across the water to Australia to compete at their National Championships and took 1st Place off the Aussie's in the Under 9 Grade. 

2009 Lily felt her skating was not up to the standard she would have liked and trained harder with her coaches.  Seeing the NZ Record times she felt she could achieve these with a bit harder training.  The coaches Haru Lee and Ken Park worked more with technique and with a change of blades to a longer pair she had to work on starts, but being able to train with 13 and 14 year old boys she became more confident that she could go faster. 

2009 saw her place 1st at the Canterbury Champs, South Island Champs and NZ National Champs.  This year the Technical Committee had a very sad loss to our sport with Jan Havenaar passing away, in his memory they created a new trophy called the Jan Havenaar Memorial Trophy.  This trophy would be given to the skater who broke the most NZ records during the season.  Lily then broke  7 New Zealand records in the 111m, 222m, 500m and broke the 333m four times during the season, by breaking all of these records, Lily became the first name to appear on the Jan Havenaar Memorial Trophy which is a great honour.

Her hope is to one day represent New Zealand at all World Cups and achieve qualification into the Winter Olympics.  Her dream is a long way off, she needs to be able to compete in Australia as well as Europe, Canada and the USA as well as against her peers here in New Zealand. Our ice time is very expensive and very hard to get.  In the countries mentioned they have specialised camps as more ice time hours available for Lily's age.

We hope within the future Lily will be lucky enough to achieve her dream.