Running for rangatahi: Five Kiwi legends and their international marathon mission for Canterbury’s young people
When Shane Thrower crosses the finish line of the New York City Marathon this November, alongside the Crusaders Team Manager and three former All Black and Crusaders legends, it will be another remarkable milestone in a journey that began with learning how to walk and talk again.
In 2003, Thrower set out on what was meant to be his first training ride for the New Zealand Ironman. Instead, he was struck from behind by a car travelling at over 100 kilometres an hour, sustaining a traumatic brain injury, multiple broken bones and spending four days in a coma, two weeks in intensive care, then three months in hospital.
What followed was months of rehabilitation and the daunting challenge of learning how to live again.
"I had to relearn how to talk, walk, social behaviours, everything," Thrower says.
"I had massive memory loss. They told me I had a brain injury, but straight away I'd forget that I had a brain injury."
Even a short walk around the hospital gardens left this adventure racer exhausted. Then came a conversation he’ll never forget.
"I had a doctor in hospital that told me I'd never work or play sport at a competitive level again. I quickly named him ‘Dr Never’ and set one of my first goals and was determined to prove him wrong.”
Rather than becoming discouraged, Thrower turned those words into motivation.
"I saw it as a positive because it really inspired me to beat the odds."
Now, more than 20 years later, he's preparing to tackle one of the world's most iconic running events alongside Crusaders Team Manager Aaron "Webby" Webb, former All Blacks and Crusaders Captain Kieran Read, Crusaders 150-gamer Ryan Crotty and legend first-five Colin Slade.
Together, the group is aiming to raise at least $125,000 for Te Tahi Youth, a Christchurch organisation providing free health and wellbeing services for young people aged 10 to 24.
For Thrower, the cause couldn't be more fitting. For most of his life, he's dedicated himself to helping others. After working in the prison service for a decade, he retrained as a teacher because he wanted to support young people early and disrupt what may have been an inevitable path to prison.
"I wanted to help them experience positive life skills and opportunities so they could make better choices for their road ahead. I love seeing the best come out in people. I think everyone's got something that they can give in life and I love helping bring that out in people and when their eyes light up, it's just the best feeling.”
So how does Shane fit in with the Crusaders? He’s one of Team Manager Webby’s great mates – and helping youth is a shared passion of theirs.
The pair first met while working together at Kimihia Adventure Programme, supporting young people facing significant challenges in their lives, and for who mainstream education wasn’t the right fit. More than two decades later, and their desire to help young people hasn’t changed.
When Webby was approached about running the New York Marathon to support Te Tahi Youth, there was one person he immediately thought of.
"Shane's a real inspiration," Webby says.
"He's got an amazing backstory, but he's one of the most positive people I've ever met in my life. He's inspired me to do some things that I probably never thought I could do, and I've seen him inspire young people to go further than they probably ever thought they could.”
Many of those young people stay in touch to this day and are proud to share their stories of successful careers, positive relationships and photos of their children.
“It's just so inspirational to watch somebody go through relearning how to live, but at the same time be so positive, so enthusiastic, so motivated, and then transfer that onto other people, it's a very humbling experience to see happen.”
For Webby, organisations like Te Tahi Youth provide something every young person needs.
"If you've got someone that can inspire you, can guide you, can put the bumpers out when you might be going the wrong way and turn you the right way, it's just so important. It's hard to do on your own when you're a teenager, you need someone in your corner."
Former All Blacks Captain Kieran Read, current Crusaders Assistant Coach Ryan Crotty and former Crusader and All Black Colin Slade have all joined the team, helping drive awareness and support for Te Tahi Youth's mission.
Read says it was impossible not to be inspired by Thrower's story.
"Shane's so inspiring. For a guy who's been through so much in the past, you see him now and he's full of life," Read says.
For Read, supporting Te Tahi Youth made joining the team an easy decision.
"Te Tahi Youth is an amazing wraparound service here in Christchurch that do everything for young people who perhaps don't have as much help as they need. So, it was a pretty easy yes once the charity angle came into it and they asked if we were happy to be involved."
The money raised will support the work Te Tahi Youth is doing across Canterbury and help bring a new East Christchurch clinical facility to life.
"This facility needs about another $150,000 to $170,000 to complete the project. If we could get to that, it would be incredible because this facility will be used to help so many young people in this community," says Webby.
The new facility will include four medical consultation rooms as well as dedicated spaces for social workers and counsellors. This will help Te Tahi Youth reach more young people in an area where demand continues to grow, and the need has never been greater.
"Last year we saw just over 1,700 young people in total across all our services," Te Tahi Youth General Manager Fiona Kay says.
"Unfortunately, at the current time we do have to decline over 60% of the young people who seek access to our medical services."
Every day, Te Tahi Youth provides free medical, mental health, employment and social support services, helping young people navigate some of the most challenging periods of their lives.
Clinical Nurse Manager Jo Kirrane sees firsthand the difference that support can make.
"We meet some of the most vulnerable young people and it's watching the support we can give them so that they can grow, and go on and do great things, that is the most rewarding," she says.
Those young people arrive at Te Tahi Youth from all walks of life. Some are disengaged from education, some are experiencing housing instability, others simply don't have access to healthcare or support services.
Attendance Navigator BJ Rakena says Te Tahi Youth's strength lies in the way it walks alongside young people, helping connect them to the people, services and opportunities that will help them move forward.
"We create a safe space where young people feel comfortable enough to ask for help, then walk alongside them as we connect them with the people, services and opportunities that will help them move forward," he says.
"We don't make decisions for them or solve their problems, but we're there to encourage, guide and have the hard conversations when they're needed."
For Rakena, many of the young people who walk through Te Tahi Youth's doors have more in common with Thrower than they might realise. After hearing about Thrower's recovery and the challenges he overcame, Rakena immediately recognised the parallels.
"You realise there's nothing wrong with a young person that needs a bit of assistance or guidance on walking through a particular path of their journey. It doesn't dictate where they're going to end up."
The marathon team hopes their fundraising can help ensure more young people get access to that support sooner.
"We're just hugely appreciative of it," Kay says.
"They're giving up a huge amount of their time to do this for us and putting themselves in a really challenging situation. We often say to our young people it's a marathon, not a sprint, and these guys are literally doing that."
For Webby, the motivation is simple.
"If we can put ourselves through a bit of pain to help someone else go through less pain, then why wouldn't you?"
While the team knows there'll be some healthy competition on the streets of New York, Read says the marathon itself is only a small part of what they're trying to achieve.
"We're going to go through 42.2 kilometres of a bit of hurt, I'm sure," he says.
"But at the end of the day, it's for a really awesome reason. If we can raise as much money as we can for Te Tahi Youth, that'll make every step worth it."
For Thrower, every training run is a reminder of how far he's come, and every kilometre is proof that Dr Never was wrong.
Soon, he'll stand on the start line of the New York City Marathon alongside a close friend and rugby legends. For a man once too frightened of the world to walk beyond his letterbox, that's already a remarkable achievement.
Because the journey that took Thrower from a hospital bed to where he is now – a husband, a successful business owner, running 270km ultras in Iceland and African deserts, and now training for one of the world’s most iconic marathons – reflects the same belief at the heart of Te Tahi Youth's work every day: that difficult circumstances don't define your future, or where you will end up.