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Eddie Nketia can see the similarities.
He has spent a lifetime walking in his dad Gus’ footsteps. Very fast-paced footsteps.
All the pieces are the same: Eddie, his dad, a national record, New Zealand, a Commonwealth Games, a defection. It’s all there, just in a different order.
“It’s history repeating itself, I guess,” the new Australian sprinter said.
Eddie was born in New Zealand and represented the Kiwis as a sprinter, but quit the country out of frustration. Now after sitting out the qualifying period, he will run for Australia at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
His dad made the switch from Ghana to New Zealand after competing at a Commonwealth Games. In 1990, Gus ran in Auckland for Ghana and never went home.
He switched allegiance to New Zealand, ran for the country and held the 100 metres national record for 28 years. That record was only broken by his son Eddie.
Eddie’s decision to switch to Australia was born of a frustration with New Zealand athletics. Gus’ story was far more dramatic. Or was it?
New Zealand media have described a midnight defection from the pages of a John le Carré novel, when Gus and teammate Laud Codjoe escaped the Auckland athletes’ village in the middle of the night, climbed a fence and fled in a waiting van with blacked-out windows. The Ghanaian athletes had seized the chance of a better life in New Zealand.
“No, we did not jump the fence. We just walked out the Games village,” Gus laughed when asked about that night. “That was it. I think they got it a bit wrong over there.”
Gus became a big figure in New Zealand athletics, and remained so even after the family moved to Canberra when Eddie was nine. Consequently, the 25-year-old’s decision to flip to Australia was difficult for both of them.
Eddie’s decision came after he was left out of the New Zealand squad for the Tokyo Olympics and then a year later the Commonwealth Games team for Birmingham. He sat out of international competition for the standard three years while waiting to be allowed to represent Australia.
“It wasn’t easy for me at first because of everything I’d been through with New Zealand, but just all the Games and all the opportunities I’ve missed out on, I just knew that I had to make a switch,” Eddie said.
“So I emailed one of the staff in Athletics Australia, and I was like, ‘I’m ready to make a switch from New Zealand to Australia. I’m willing to do anything to get on that ship.’
“It was actually a tough conversation [with Dad] because being in New Zealand for life was originally the plan, but after everything that we’ve been through ... he just said that I just gotta make the right decision that is going to make me feel comfortable at the end of the day.”
Gus understood, with the pragmatism of a parent.
“It doesn’t matter at the end of the day who he competes for. As long as he’s out there enjoying himself, I’m happy for him. We, the family, we always support him in what he wants to do,” he said.
“I told him to run for New Zealand but he said he wants to compete for Australia because this is where he lives and all of his friends on the team, he knows them all … so I said, ‘if that’s what you want, we’re behind you’.”
Gus also knew the weight his opinion carried with his son.
“I think he got into it [running] because I told him to,” Gus admits.
“Even when he was here in Canberra, like with the school [events], he would do it, but it wasn’t his No.1 thing. Time and time he was saying to me that he wanted to give it up. I just keep telling him how good he is, and he will go far if he takes it serious.”
And he has. Not only has he switched to Australia, he also made the move from an American football scholarship at University of Hawaii to a track and field one at University of Southern California. His times have dropped – in May he set the Australian all-conditions record when he clocked 9.74 seconds with a strong +5.6 wind at his back.
“Honestly, like I’ve been running it [sub-10 seconds] four times now [with illegal tailwinds] so like it just shows that I can get one sub legal. I just hope that the conditions be right. It may not be warm in Glasgow, but hopefully I’ll be ready enough to get the times. Whether it’s going to be rain, shine, windy or not, I just concentrate on what I can do, right?” Eddie said.
“It’s just exciting times. Next week, I’m competing in Glasgow, and I can’t contain my own excitement, beautiful things are coming.
“Dad said, it’s my life, and that decision wasn’t easy. But at the end of the day, I just had to make that decision and it does validate the decision.
“I’m just happy that I made that decision. It’s something I should have made a long time ago. I wish I could have been running for Australia sooner, but so much political stuff happened … and the whole three years got shot down, which is annoying. But it is what it is. I’m just happy that it’s better late than never.
