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| Sam Idiens (Year 8) brings home the Canterbury relay team to victory and the Dave Dixon Baton |
Results
These races are an annual event and for 2016 were hosted by Wellington at Waikanae Park on the Kapiti Coast. Next year the event will be in Timaru.
Weather wise it was fine day which proved spring had arrived, except not in Wellington city (17 degrees compared to 12 degrees in Wellington city.
Competitors are of primary and intermediate school age (9 to 12) and are the best in their grades in their school regions.
The regions represented were South Canterbury Canterbury, Tasman and Wellington. To get selected kids have to compete in a number of zone/sub-regional races to make the final teams of up to 10 in each grade. There were 8 races so about 300 children participated in 8 races.
The 1km course was interesting and reasonably demanding with a number of rises and downhill sections. Race distances for the first 4 races was 2km (year 5 & 6, girls and boys) while the last 4 races covered 3km (year 7 & 8 girls and boys)
Canterbury dominated across most of the races and produced some fine team racing.
There was also a 8 1km lap relay with a team member from each grade per region. Once again Canterbury showed their superiority but all teams got plenty of team-mate support.
Every finisher got a participation medal with medals for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Canterbury won the Phil Costley shield and the Dace Dixon relay Baton. Local Olympian Hamish Carson fresh from Rio presented the winner medals and trophies
Daryl the dude did the timekeeping and as an example of efficiency only used 5 GoPro's rather than the usual 7.
