The award-winning web series Scratched: Aotearoa's Lost Sporting Legends has returned for the third season on The Spinoff, celebrating five more incredible New Zealand athletes who maybe didn't receive the spotlight they deserved.
The last two seasons tracked down some great sporting heroes, including Precious MacKenizie, Anne Audain and Meda MacKenzie.
Erin Baker competes in the Women's Triathlon at the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990. Photo: Photosport
Natalie Wilson is the series producer and has directed the first episode with triathlete Erin Baker.
She tells Jesse Mulligan that with every series she is blown away by the stories of underappreciated athletes.
“We get a lot of tip offs sometimes from writers, sometimes from viewers of the show, at this point we’re getting athletes we’ve covered before getting back in touch and saying, ‘have you considered this person?’
“So we like to get a diverse range and interesting stories, people who have exciting little things happening on the side beyond their sporting career.”
She personally hadn’t heard of Erin Baker before, but her episode highlights her amazing journey to the younger generations who also might not have heard of her.
“Her story was just so good, we couldn’t let it go … she’s just a legend, she’s undeniable.”
Baker’s personality shines through in her everything she does, Wilson says.
“She says it herself, from when she was a little kid, just doing school races or three-legged races, she was completely single-minded, competitive, took everything very seriously and that sort of thread through her life.
“She got really involved in the Springbok Tour protest and gave that her all.”
After moving to Australia and getting into triathlon, Baker trained up and started winning right away, even in European championships.
“She’s so focused and has the athletic ability to back that up and so she’s just basically a machine, and went on to win many things, nine world championships I think, the Hawaii Ironman a few times,” Wilson says.
“She probably didn’t have the sort of personality that was going to show up on What Now and get gunged or anything like that, but she’s just so incredibly inspiring and self-aware but completely unapologetic about being like that and rightly so.”
One story that stands out is from when she competed in the first European Ironman Championship and ended up winning.
“There were other things that happened that weren’t in the episode, including her getting into an altercation with an official, but I think you can sort of imagine that while watching the episode.
“It was a terrible day, she got a flat tyre 120 kilometres into the cycle leg, couldn’t get the tyre off with her hands because they were so frozen, a bystander tried to help her, which would’ve disqualified her from the race, and nicked off the bike pump, and then ended up tearing the bike tyre off with her teeth.”
Season three of ‘Scratched’ also covers the stories of woodchopping champion Sheree Taylor, boxer Ali Afakasi, pole dancer Koko Ibaraki, and runner Marise Chamberlain.
Watch the full series of Scratched: Aotearoa’s Lost Sporting Legends now. Made with support from NZ On Air.
