Deidre Helm has hardly had the chance to watch any athletics in 26 years — but she is at the track every Saturday.
You will find the 52-year-old in the Caledonian Ground’s control room processing the day’s results and records.
It is a role she has filled for Athletics Otago for the past 26 years, having begun volunteering after injuries to both ACLs ended her running career.
At each meeting, she is one of the first to arrive and always the last to leave, as there is plenty to the job.
After processing the late entries and any numbers that athlete have not received, she begins the paperwork for the officials.
That means putting together clipboards for every field event and the start line sheets for the track.
Throughout the day she processes scratchings and manually types in the field event results — the track ones come straight from the electronic timer.
At the end of the day she collates the results and sends them throughout the country.
It is plenty for one person to take on, and at a bigger event those afternoons quickly become 12-plus hour days.
And there is a catch.
While doing all that, she does not get to watch the competition.
For someone who loves the sport so much, that is a big sacrifice.
But perhaps it takes someone that loves the sport that much to make it.
"I never see athletics, I’m tucked away in the far corner," she said.
"People say to me ‘what were the best results during the day’?
"I don’t actually look at the results, they’re just names and numbers.
"People ask me what a good performance was that day, I couldn’t tell them.
"It sounds stupid, but I don’t actually read the results as a whole."
Having begun athletics as a seven-year-old, Helm was an accomplished sprinter.
At Bayfield High School she won gold in the junior 200m at the national secondary school championships, alongside winning several senior national relay titles for Otago.
She also played touch and netball, the former being where her knee injuries occurred.
That led to her stepping into an official’s role at athletics, and she was quickly shoulder-tapped to do the results job.
While she missed being out in the arena, she enjoys what she does.
"The group of officials we’ve got and the people we’ve had beforehand, they all become your friends.
"I think that’s why you do it, for that companionship.
"You see athletes that have come through from children and [get] to see them performing well on the next stage.
"Then to see them go on and be representatives of their country, it’s just fantastic."
While opportunities had been presented to go to a higher level, she had not taken them.
Her family — husband Graeme and three now grown-up children — remained a priority throughout.
It was with Graeme she finally did get to watch some high level athletics — attending last year’s world championships in London.
She felt quality remained in the sport within Otago, although numbers had fallen, as they had in every sport.
She felt reasons for that ranged from the variety of sports available now, other sports becoming year-round and team sports being slightly more attractive to kids.
Officials were also becoming thinner on the ground.
However, the results should remain in safe hands, as Helm has no thought of quitting just yet.
