18-05-2025
Sporting talent that runs in the DNA
It runs in the family. Running that is.
In Sam Ruthe's whānau, running and winning go back generations.
Long before Ruthe became the youngest person in the world to break four minutes in the mile, at the age of 15, back in March, his grandmother, grandfather, mother and father all had athletics successes of their own.
Grandmother Rosemary Wright, née Stirling, even won a 1970 Commonwealth Games gold medal in jaw-dropping style (more on that soon).
Yet Ruthe isn't the only athlete to come from such notable lineage. The annals of New Zealand athletics contain a surprising number of champion sportswomen – including Sylvia Potts and Sally Mene (née Flynn) – who produced silver-fern wearing descendants.
Kiwis Potts and Mene competed at the Commonwealth Games in 1970 along with Rosemary Wright.
But despite being born in Timaru, Wright wasn't wearing a black singlet. After spending her early years in the Bay of Plenty, she moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 14 with her English mother and Scottish father, and joined the Wolverhampton Harriers.
Her running career took off at pace. At 17, she turned heads at the Scottish championships, winning the 400m and 800m, and was promptly asked to race for Scotland.
'My grandparents were proud Scots and so was my dad, so I accepted,' she told a Herald Scotland reporter years later. Wright declined a subsequent offer of an England singlet. 'I never regretted it. Scotland, with smaller numbers, really looked after you.'
Representing Scotland proved advantageous when Edinburgh was selected to host the 1970 Commonwealth Games. Wright and her teammates garnered the loudest cheers at the opening ceremony, marching into Meadowbank Stadium behind the Scottish flag.
The 65-strong New Zealand team included Sylvia Potts and Sally Mene, marching behind flagbearer, Les Mills.
On the last day of the Games, Wright lined up at the start of the 800m final in her Scotland blue. Potts, in black, was on the start-line too. Mene, meanwhile, was in the infield contesting the javelin.
The three champion sportswomen, all competing simultaneously, would one day have Kiwi children who'd become champions, too.
As the 800m final unfolded, a passionate partisan crowd were egging Wright on.
Rocketing down the backstraight for the final time, Wright and the two runners just ahead of her began to surge ahead of the pack. By the final 100m, the commentator proclaimed: 'These three for the medals'.
From third position, Wright valiantly closed in on the leading duo until drawing level with them just ahead of the finish-line. A row of three, it was anyone's race to win, but the electrifying crowd willed Wright on. As the trio crossed the line, Wright nosed slightly ahead.
'It was like the finish of a sprint race, not 800 metres,' the commentator declared.
Wright's victory was announced the closest finish of the entire Games, by only three hundredths of a second. The first local sportswoman to win Commonwealth Games track gold, it was more than enough to make her the first lady of Scottish athletics.
'My most vivid memory is from about 150 metres from the finish, and the piercing screaming and yelling of the crowd ringing in my ears,' Wright told The Scotsman when she returned to the scene of her triumph in 2008, as manager of the New Zealand cross country team.
Asked by Team Scotland in recent years how she felt when she won, Wright said: 'It's just relief. You think, 'Thank goodness that's over'. And I can remember somebody running onto the track with a great big teddy bear and handing it to me and I was just bewildered…'
Bewildered, too, was Sylvia Potts, during the 1500m final two days earlier. While leading the race, she'd toppled over two metres short of the finish-line – just one stride away from certain victory.
As she picked herself up and hobbled across the finish line in ninth place, the commentator summed up the collective horror: 'And that must be the unluckiest story in the whole history of athletics.'
Sylvia Potts falls at the finish of the 1970 Commonwealth Games 1500m, allowing England's Rita Ridley (centre) to take the gold.
Potts finished just out of the medals in the 800m, too, ending up in fifth place. She went on to enjoy improved fortunes though, given the honour of running the Queen's baton into the opening ceremony at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
She coached many young athletes throughout her life. And her son Richard Potts represented New Zealand on the track at the 1990 and 1994 Commonwealth Games. Today, the late Sylvia Potts is remembered at the annual track and field meet in Hawke's Bay, named the Allan and Sylvia Potts Classic.
Her teammate – discus and javelin thrower Sally Mene – also went on to have a remarkable family. She and husband Mene Mene – who represented New Zealand in decathlon at the 1974 Games – are the parents of former Silver Ferns captain Bernice Mene.
While Potts and Mene are celebrated names in New Zealand sport, few Kiwis know much about Sam Ruthe's grandmother, though the now 77-year-old has lived here since returning to the Bay of Plenty in her thirties with her husband, Trevor Wright, who ran the world's fastest debut marathon in the early 1970s.
She's never been forgotten in Scotland, however, proudly remembered as the original sportswoman to win Commonwealth gold. When the Games were held in Edinburgh in 1986, Wright was invited to take part in the opening ceremony.
'I've always been welcomed back, almost as a hero,' she told The Scotsman.
She was even awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow in 2014, deemed to have played an important role in Scotland and the Commonwealth Games.
Wright's Commonwealth victory wasn't the first time she'd stepped onto the podium; a member of the British quartet, she'd won gold at the 1969 European championships in the 4 x 400m relay in world record time.
She narrowly missed claiming a medal at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Jamaica, placing fourth in both the 440 yards and 880 yards. At Munich 1972, Wright made the 800m Olympic final – her seventh-place time setting a British record.
After her athletic heyday, Wright became a teacher and continued to run for many years, turning to marathons.
Her daughter Jess – Sam Ruthe's mum – became a top runner, too, winning the Auckland marathon and representing New Zealand in cross country. Jess is married to yet another champion runner, Ben Ruthe, who has also won the Auckland marathon and competed in cross country for New Zealand.
It's clear that Ruthe was born into a family where running is a way of life. With so much running success in the family, the teen's extraordinary achievements make more sense, yet are still hard to fathom. Especially considering he has surpassed the earlier record of double Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen in becoming the youngest ever sub-four-minute miler.
If Ruthe's future is as blinding as his form suggests, his grandmother will be well-equipped to mentor him through the heady experience of running and winning on the world stage.
