Tyla King: Black Fern Sevens player on their Olympic Gold Medal win over Canada

Medal number one for New Zealand at the Paris Olympic Games.  

The Black Ferns Sevens have defended the gold medal they won three years ago in Tokyo - beating Canada 19-12 at the Stade de France. 

Black Fern Tyla King told Mike Hosking that it’s always hard when you’re up against quality sides, but they knew if they tidied up their plays and kept applying pressure, they would get the job done. 

She said that she's so proud of the performances they put in as a team, from day one all the way through to the final. 

“We found our flow and we just went out there and played the brand of footy that I know, I knew we were capable of.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The the gold medal is celebrating so nineteen twelve it
was in the end. The gold medal is our back
to back Olympic Gold's perfect send off for a couple

(00:20):
of the greats, of course Bush and Woodman Wickliffe. He
is on her way to retirement along with Tyler King.
Tyler King is well us morning, didn't Mike?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
How's it going?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Very well? Is the medal still around your neck?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
The middle storem Ick, The juicy and the shorts and.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
The socks are still onto fantastic. What's the medal look like? Oh?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It is beautiful. It's kind of like it's got the
Goddess mikey on it, gold plates it and then you
turn it around and it's got a piece of the
Eiffel Tower.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
That's brilliant, isn't it. Hey? I watched the start of
the game and you looked so dominant. I thought this
is going to be a thrashing, and then they came
back at you. How did it feel for you?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
It? We don't help ourselves. I was giving the yellow
so it's always a hard when you're up against quality sides.
But we're practicing training going down to Slix and we
held them out long enough just for their money to
secure one try and then we're back to our full compliment.
And then we knew it was only our mistakes that
were keeping them in that game. So if we tied

(01:18):
it up our own eras and really destruct hard on attack,
made sure we stayed in our threes, and then on defenses,
keep coming forward and keep applying pressure, we knew will
get the job done. And that's what we did.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Were you pleased it was Canada not Australia or it
didn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
It didn't matter who we were going to face. We
knew that we were going to give it everything that
we had, and it ended up being Canada. They played amazing.
They had an incredible quarter final I think it was
against France, being in a home team on home soil,
and then they went in did the job against when
it counted against Australia. So all the teams in the
circuit are amazing, and you know, you just got to

(01:53):
show up when it counts, and we were able to
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
How was the pressure leading and given the expectation you
were supposed to win a medal if not gold, Yeah, there's.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Always gonna be pressure, and we knew that was there,
and we addressed it so early on and then at
the end of the day we just said, we just
need to focus on ourselves and that's what we did.
And I think I'm just so proud of the performances
that we put in as a team from day one
all the way through to the final, because if I
look back to Tokyo, that gold medal moment was incredible,
but we never hit our full potential. Some of those

(02:24):
games were absolutely scrappy. You know, we had the whole
entire country on the edge of the seat when we
played the semi final against Fiji in overtime. But this tournament,
this Olympics, everything came together. We found our flow and
we just went out there and played the brand of
footy that I know I knew we were keepable of.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Full of fantastic. Do you want to reconsider retiring.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Nope, I am good. I've had my time in this
black jersey, and you know, I've grown up in this
in this team, in this environment, and I've been here
since I was seventeen. For the last thirteen years, this
has been in a big and huge part of my life.
It's going to be definitely weird leaving it behind. But
I know, I know it's fine physically. I probably could,

(03:08):
you know, play on for another couple of years, but
there's just this feeling you get in it's my time
to you know, pass this Judy on the number seven,
which I've been inswered by debut back and twenty twelve.
It's time to pass it on to someone else. Although
I do trick with some of the girls that now
now you can't e sorry they're retiring.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
It warmers. Congratulations, go well, lovely to talk to you.
Appreciate it very much.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Thank you so much. Thank you for your supporting all
of our country getting behind us. This means a lot.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Fantastic Tyler, go well, Tyler King out of Paris. For
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