Madeleine Chapman

Early life

Chapman grew up in the Wellington Region.^[5] Her father was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, while her mother grew up on Upolu in Samoa.^[6] Chapman has Tuvaluan heritage through her maternal grandfather, and Chinese heritage through her great-grandfather.^[6] Chapman has nine siblings, and was an avid reader as a child.^[6][7]

Chapman received a scholarship to attend Samuel Marsden Collegiate School in Wellington, where she competed in basketball, athletics and cricket events.^[7][8][9] In 2011 she won the Norwood Award for Outstanding Girls Under 20 player of the year,^[10] and was also named the College Sport Wellington women's Cricket Player of the Year.^[11]

Sporting career

From 2010 to 2013, Chapman played cricket professionally for the Wellington Blaze.^{[12][13][14][2]} In 2012, Chapman joined the Samoa women's national cricket team, playing seven rounds in the 2012 Pepsi ICC East Asia Pacific Women's Trophy and topping the batting leader board for the competition.^[15][16] Chapman continued to compete for Samoa until 2014.^[17]

Representing Auckland-based North Harbour Bays Athletics, Chapman first competed in New Zealand athletics competitions as a javelin thrower in 2013.^[1][18] She attended the New Zealand Athletics Championships in 2013, winning two gold medals for the javelin throw.^[1] In 2014, Chapman quit athletics due to an injury.^[19]

Chapman returned to athletics competitions in late 2016 and 2017.^[1] At the Porritt Classic in 2017, Chapman was the champion women's javelin thrower (49.18 m).^[20] At the 2017 New Zealand national championships, Chapman won a gold medal with a career-best javelin throw of 50.98 metres,^[1] outcompeting national champion Tori Peeters at the competition.^[21] As of 2022, this ranks Chapman fourth in the list of record holders for New Zealand Women's javelin throw.^[22]

Media career

Chapman received a scholarship to attend the University of Auckland, where she studied education.^[6][7] While at university, Chapman wrote as a film critic for Craccum, the Auckland University Students' Association magazine.^[23][24]

In 2016, Chapman became a staff writer for online magazine The Spinoff,^[7] beginning as an intern.^[25] In the same year, Chapman was asked to ghostwrite New Zealand professional basketball player Steven Adams' autobiography, which was published in 2018.^[26] Chapman had known Adams since childhood, as both had played in Wellington regional high school basketball competitions.^[26]

While at The Spinoff, Chapman appeared on Three infotainment television programme The Spinoff TV (2018),^[6] and has written and directed Scratched: Aotearoa's Lost Sporting Legends (2019 onwards), an NZ On Air-funded documentary webseries.^[27] In 2018, Chapman won the Young Business Journalist of the Year award at the New Zealand Shareholders' Association's 2018 Business Journalism Awards,^[28] and the best opinion writer (humour/satire) award at the 2019 Voyager Media Awards.^[29] Some of Chapman's best-known works include pieces on housing unaffordability,^[30] sleep inertia aiding lamps,^[31] and ranking lists of snack foods such as biscuits and lollies.^[32] Her 2018 article exposing false country of origin practices by Denise L'Estrange-Corbet's fashion label World won the award for best (single) news story / scoop at the 2019 Voyager Media Awards.^[33]

Chapman left The Spinoff as a writer in early 2020, taking a break from journalism.^[25] During the same year, Chapman released A New Kind of Leader, a biography of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern she was commissioned to write in 2019.^[34][35] When print magazine North & South was relaunched in late 2020, Chapman became the publication's senior editor.^[36] In late 2021, Chapman became the co-editor of The Spinoff, alongside long time Spinoff staff writer Alex Casey.^[37][38] She stepped down as editor in late 2025,^[39] and was replaced by Veronica Schmidt.^[40]

Javelin throw