Michaela Blyde

Michaela Brake (née Blyde; born 29 December 1995) is a New Zealand professional rugby sevens player and a double Olympic gold medalist. She was the first female player to win back-to-back World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year titles, in 2017 and 2018. Blyde holds the record for the most tries by a New Zealand women sevens player in a single match (six against Sri Lanka at the 2022 Commonwealth Games) and also the record for most tries in a single fixture when she scored five tries against England in Langford in 2017. Blyde has won gold medals at the 2018 Sevens World Cup, 2018 Commonwealth Games, 2020 Tokyo Olympics, 2024 Paris Olympics, and six Sevens titles. in New Plymouth to Cherry (née Sutton) and Stephen Blyde. Her father, Stephen, played halfback for local club Clifton and provincial rugby for the Taranaki Colts while her mother Cherry played representative rugby for Taranaki, played for the Black Ferns in 1992 and in 2022 became the first female president of the Taranaki rugby football union.

Blyde was raised up on the family's dairy farm at Lepperton, and was educated at New Plymouth Girls' High School.

Blyde's younger brothers, Liam and Cole were academy rugby players with Taranaki. Liam went on to be selected for a development project for the men's Sevens team before playing for the Taranaki Bulls in 2021.

In 2014, Blyde commenced a Bachelor of Sport and Exercise degree through correspondence at Massey University.

Rugby union career When she was young her parents encouraged her and her brothers to play for their local rugby club, Clifton. "Rugby was my first sport as a five-year-old, but when I got to the age where we had to start tackling, I was a bit scared of playing with the boys" and so she switched at the age of eight to playing football.

In 2012 the New Zealand Rugby Union organised a "Go for Gold" campaign to identify talent with the potential to represent New Zealand in the Sevens competition at the Rio Olympics. Cherie Blyde who was employed at the time by Taranaki Rugby as a Rugby Development Officer made her daughter who had just recommenced playing rugby, attend one of the open trials.

At the trial she was put through various fitness, rugby skill and character assessment activities. As she commenced her warmed-up for her first game she noticed her father on the sidelines. He had without telling her flown over from New Zealand to surprise her, which caused her to break down and begin crying before she ran to give him a hug.

Alongside representing New Zealand Blyde played for her school in the 2013 Condor Sevens, which was the first time New Plymouth Girls' High had fielded a team in this National Secondary Schools Rugby Sevens competition. After commencing the 2016–2017 Women's World Sevens Series with only a one-year contract Blyde was to end the season with 40 points and the title of the series' top try-scorer, which assisted New Zealand in winning the series title. Her performance led to Blyde being named 2017 World Rugby Women's Sevens Player of the year.

Over the course of the 2017–2018 Women's World Sevens Series Blyde scored 27 tries and was named World Rugby Women's Sevens Player of the year in 2018, becoming the first women's player to win it not only twice, but in consecutive years.

2020 Tokyo Olympic Games At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 Blyde scored seven tries in five matches, including in the final, which New Zealand won, earning her a gold medal.

2022 Commonwealth Games and World Cup Blyde was named in the Black Ferns Sevens squad for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. She won a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games.

She later won a silver medal at the 2022 Rugby World Cup Sevens in Cape Town.

2023–2024 Seven Series season On 10 December 2023 during her team's win over Canada in the quarter-final of the Cape Town tournament of the HSBC SVNS World Series Blyde became the second women to score 200 tries in the HSBC international sevens competition.

At the Hong Kong tournament on 5–7 April 2024 she competed in her fiftieth international sevens tournament (including Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games). At the time only six other women had reached this milestone, among the others being Charlotte Caslick, Chloé Pelle, Sharni Williams and Portia Woodman. She celebrated the occasion with three tries in the final as part of her contribution to New Zealand's 36–7 demolition of the United States. As a result, she became the first player of either sex to score three tries five times in a world series final. This bought her score up to a total of 28 tries in Seven series finals, trailing Portia Woodman who had scored 33. She was named player of the final.

At the 2024 Singapore Sevens tournament on 3–5 May 2024 she again scored a hat-trick in the final as part of her contribution to New Zealand's 31–21 win over Australia. This meant she became the first player of either sex to score three tries six times in a world series final. Singapore was the last tournament in the 2023–24 seven league series and bought her total to 52 tries (which was 27%) out of the 192 tries scored by New Zealand.

Blyde ended the 2023–24 season having played 45 games and scored 53 tries.

2024 Paris Olympics On 20 June 2024 it was announced that she had been selected as a member of the New Zealand Women’s Rugby Sevens team for the Paris Olympics. During pool play against Canada Blyde required seven stitches in her forehead after she made contact with Canadian player Charity Williams. The injury didn't prevent her from playing in all of the remaining games. Blyde scored 10 tries over the course of the Olympic sevens competition to make her the second highest try scorer. One of her tries was in the final against Canada which was won by New Zealand 19–12 to give her back-to-back Olympic gold medals.

2024–2025 Seven Series season Following the Olympics Blyde took a break from international rugby for the remainder of 2024 and thus missed the first two tournaments of the 2024-2025 sevens series season. Blyde's return at the Perth tournament held on 24–26 January 2025, saw her score four tries in the semi-final against France. Two of these were sufficient for her to become the second woman to score 250 tries in the HSBC international sevens competition.

At the Vancouver tournament held on 21–23 February 2025 Blyde scored five tries in the first eight minutes of the team’s pool match against Ireland to pass Portia Woodman’s record of 256 tries and become the Seven series all-time leading women’s try scorer. She scored 10 tries over the course of the tournament to bring her career total to 264 tries.

Rugby league career In December 2024, Blyde announced she had signed a one-year contract to play for the Warriors in the NRLW in 2025. "I'm excited to be a part of something that's growing super, super quickly and you'd be silly not to want to be involved in it," she said.

Personal life On 4 January 2025 at Ohauiti in the Bay of Plenty, Blyde married her long term partner, Olympic gold medallist rower Michael Brake.

Awards and honours 2017, Canada Sevens Langford dream team. 2017, World Rugby Women's Sevens Player of the Year. 2018, World Rugby Women's Sevens Player of the Year. 2019, Australian Women's Sevens performance tracker player of the round. 2021, Joint winner of Taranaki Daily News Person of the Year 2021 with Gayle Broughton. 2023, Member of that years women's rugby sevens dream team. 2024, Taranaki Sports Awards Sportswoman of the Year and Overall Sportsperson of the Year.