But for a local petanque-playing couple it has proved to be a winner.
Three players, Dunedin City Petanque’s Neville Frost, Ōtaki Petanque’s Shirley MacDonald, and Herne Bay Petanque member Ian Baker were selected to represent New Zealand at the 2024 Pan Pacific Petanque Cup. Frost’s wife and former Petanque New Zealand president Stefany Frost joined them as manager.
The Chinese Taipei Petanque Federation hosted the competition, which recently took place in Taipei City, Taiwan.
Frost said, at the start of the first game, MacDonald, succumbing to the challenges of 36°C heat, had to be taken to hospital, suffering from heat stroke.
"She was quite ill.
"She actually could not see at one stage.
"So they called an ambulance."
While MacDonald was being cared for, Frost had to step up to take her place.
"So in the middle of the chaos, because I’d been put down as player four, I was allowed to fill in for her," she said.
This was quite a challenge, because Frost was nursing a severed rotator cuff injury and had not played in 18 months.
Knowing she was due to have surgery on her shoulder in Dunedin when she returned from Taiwan, Frost decided to risk playing.
"Because I knew I was having surgery, and I knew I probably couldn’t do any more damage ... I just bit the bullet and did it."
Frost found she was playing "OK".
The hastily reconfigured team did more than OK, winning all its games in the semifinal, and going on to win gold in the final of the mixed triple 70-plus category.
Frost said, in the meantime, the Chinese Taipei Petanque Federation had been "amazing" in looking after MacDonald in hospital.
"They were incredible."
Frost said MacDonald made a full recovery.
"The good news is we won the game.
"The bad news is this is how we won it," she said.
Seventy-nine teams in total played in the Pan Pacific Cup, including eight teams in the 70-plus category.
This was the first time the cup had included this age category, and after the experience of winning, Frost found renewed excitement for the game and was already looking ahead to the World Masters Games in Taipei next May.
"We’ve all got our hands up already."
While the over-70s team is celebrating, back at Dunedin City Petanque the focus is also on its younger members.
"We have a very active youth scene, we have 16 youth members.
"We run a youth league every Tuesday afternoon during the summer months, and some of our youth actually represented New Zealand at the transtasman in Perth this year," Frost said.
