Craig Sweeney

A Whole Lotta Heart

This month, North Shore local Craig Sweeney takes up the challenge of representing New Zealand in five different disciplines on the world stage in Gothenburg, Sweden.

He is part of a team of 15 heading over to take part in a unique competition, for which he has been training the last year.

Representing your country in any elite discipline takes dedication and commitment, but what makes Craig’s feat so special is that he has undergone a full heart transplant, and the competition is the World Transplant Games (WTG).

WTG is an international sporting event for transplant athletes, where more than 1000 transplanted athletes from all over the world will come to Sweden to compete in the competition from the 17th to the 24th of June.

The competitions consist of 13 different sports including Golf, Athletics, Mini Marathon, Badminton, Swimming, Tennis, Table Tennis, Cycling, Squash, Bowling, Volleyball, Petanque and Floorball. The purpose of WTG is to demonstrate the physical success of transplant surgery and to raise awareness of the need to increase organ donation.

For the last year Craig has been training three to five days a week to prepare for his events – Discus, Javelin, Ball Throw, Petanque and Volleyball – but it was only six years ago when Craig was stuck in a London hospital awaiting the heart that would save his life, while he was supposed to be on his O.E. backpacking through Europe.

After nine months in Harefield Hospital, Craig’s mum Brenda – who had dropped everything and travelled from New Zealand on five hours notice to spend the whole nine months at his bedside – got the call saying they had the lifesaving heart for her son.

“He’s a big boy my son – 6.4 – and I said if it’s not the right heart we don’t want it,” says Brenda. “That was at 7pm; they came back at one in the morning after doing all the tests and it was a match, and it saved my boy’s life.”

From his initial heart failure, Craig spent 11 months in hospital, during which he suffered cardiac arrest and underwent more than 50 hours of surgery.

“And six years later I’m going to win some gold medals for New Zealand,” he jokes.

Always the athlete, Craig has represented East Coast Bays since he was nine and after a year of training for the upcoming games is feeling both nervous and confident about going to compete.

“I’ve got my goals – discus and javelin I’ve never done before but I’m really enjoying them. Discus is my favourite, but it is a hard one because it’s all about technique and getting used to that is a tough one – my coach is always saying I’m doing it wrong.”

It takes more than just training to get all the way to the games, as they are not subsidised in any way, so Craig and his family have had to raise the funds themselves through basic fundraising, and in some cases have secured sponsorship for which the family is very grateful.

“Me, my fiancé Nadia and mum have done heaps of fundraising through the community which will pay for our hotels and flights, and then we’ve had others like Adidas come to the party and hook me up with a full uniform and kit which has helped a lot.”

As well as Adidas, as soon as Jetts – the gym franchise – found out about Craig’s goal of getting to the games, they set him up with a free membership to help get him in shape; DebitSuccess made a large donation and Sunnynook’s Vein and Laser, a Specialist Varicose Vein medical clinic, performed a free surgery to remove the varicose veins that have plagued Craig since he got sick.

“The family have worked really hard to do the rest,” says Craig.

Channel Readers who want to help Craig achieve his goal can contact Brenda at brenz_boyz@hotmail.com - or an anonymous donation can be made to 123059 0402067 00 50; reference Olympics.