Team behind the team: the evolution of Team Erika

HPSNZ Update caught up with Erika and a few of her HPSNZ support team to gain some insights into the team dynamics behind her 2026 successes and what the road to LA28 looks like for them.

The thing that stands out about Erika’s HPSNZ support team and their close working relationship with the athlete is the purposeful evolution driving them forward. That evolution has contributed to her outstanding 2026 results and there is more planned between now and LA28.

HPSNZ Performance Physiotherapist Becs Longhurst first worked with Erika at the 2023 World Championships and again at the 2024 Paris Olympics. But it wasn’t until Erika moved to Auckland last year that she became her regular Performance Physiotherapist.

Becs has seen Erika progress from an athlete in 2023 who needed to be on the physio table every day, multiple times a day just to get through her competition schedule, to the strong, robust athlete she is today.

“Erika – like Usain Bolt – has a congenital scoliosis which changes the way her back moves,” Becs explains. “Back then she wasn’t as strong.”

Post Paris, the evolution began with a realisation that Erika and the team needed to make a change, particularly from a physio and strength perspective.

The development of a new plan coincided with Erika’s decision to leave Dunedin for Auckland, with Becs taking over as her regular physio and a change in Strength & Conditioning (S&C) practitioner.

Realisation that Erika needed to be stronger to make real performance gains has led to Becs working closely with Erika’s S&C practitioner Will McTaggart and Performance & Technique Analysts (PTAs) Leaha Dickey and Matt Ingram, a key element of her campaign now and into the future.

“We started with an integrated approach to building strength. Erika did Pilates alongside her strength work in the gym, which created a more stable base from her to be able to strengthen from,” Becs says.

HPSNZ S&C coach Will McTaggart says as well as increasing Erika’s loading in the gym the team have worked on progressions and methods to modify her range of motion to accommodate her back condition while building strength.

“That has made huge difference to her strength and durability to the point where her back is very rarely a problem,” Becs says.

Will says when he joined Erika’s support team, she had just completed a massive strength block.

“We knew Erika was already strong and robust, so the focus shifted to preparing her to peak at the Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacs,” he says.

All 3 HPSNZ practitioners work closely with Erika and her coach Graham Hill in a range of settings. Becs attends Erika’s gym sessions as often as possible and all 3 are poolside supporting Graham as he puts Erika through her paces.

PTA Leaha has a key role at poolside, filming all of Erika’s training sessions, processing the footage and providing data and analysis to coach Graham on stroke rate, stroke count, length and speed.

“AI enables us to film, upload the footage to an HPSNZ Goldmine platform and AI can process the data automatically, meaning we can get more information more quickly to coach and athlete,” Leaha says.

While the approach to Erika’s campaign in her Dunedin days was appropriate for her age and stage, following her move to Auckland, she was ready for a more integrated, holistic, athlete-led approach – another key element in the ongoing evolution of Team Erika.

Becs, Will and Leaha meet with HPSNZ’s wider Athlete Performance Support team fortnightly and the 3 of them join the other members of Erika’s tight team to meet regularly with Graham and Erika to discuss and progress her campaign.

“The nice thing is that Erika has been the one driving the tight team meetings and integration to help her understand ‘the why’ and how things will work.” Becs says.

Outside of the daily training environment Becs, Leaha and Will often also catch up informally to share ideas about the campaigns they are working on.

Will and Leaha are new additions to Erika’s support team this year and are quick to point out how welcoming Graham and Erika have been.

They also heap praise on Erika’s grit, determination and curiosity as well as her attention to detail.

Becs: “She is so hard working and so determined. The distances she swims and the work she puts in – it’s not that fun! But she gets it done.”

Leaha: “At Pan Pacs, just to witness her whole approach to nutrition, to swimming prep and everything else was just awesome. You see a lot of athletes who don’t have her focus, understanding or ownership of their preparation and performance.”

The road to LA28

Erika’s tight team are working on the next stage of the evolution which is to translate her well-developed strength and robustness into speed, power and impact in the water – specifically off the wall in the turns during her races.

“Up to now we have been able to attack strength with a spray gun. Now it’s time to go in with a fine tip marker. She’s got that strength. Now it’s about how she uses it quickly off the wall.” Becs says.

The Team is also looking at how they create that kinaesthetic awareness so that when Erika is in the water, she knows where she is at so she can hit the wall quickly rather than not knowing and simply pushing off the wall and potentially losing a valuable fraction of a second.

Will, Leaha and Matt, with the help of HPSNZ’s AI video analysis tools, have put together a technical model of Erika’s turns that breaks each turn down into its component parts, enabling the team to look closely for performance gains.

“The video analysis looks at the turns – 5m out from the wall and 15m after the turn. We review the technique and look at how we can tweak it to get more power and impact off the wall,” Leaha says.

“There are a lot of turns in a 1500m race!”

Her support team is very excited by Erika’s drive in her LA28 campaign.

Will: “She’s hungry for success in LA, and there’s no question she’s all in.”