Macchiato Marathon

The 182-strong New Zealand Olympic team will have flat whites and long blacks on tap in Beijing thanks to award-winning barista Julianne Frith, 21, from Auckland, who was selected by a panel of former Olympians and Beijing chef de mission Dave Currie. Currie said it was difficult to get a good cup of coffee at the 2004 Athens’ Games. “So one of the sponsors ran a competition and this young woman had to have a test and face a selection panel and she came up trumps,” he said. Frith is expected to make up to 500 cups of coffee a day, though Currie said he did not expect any problems with caffeine being on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s monitoring list after previously being a banned substance.