Zoe Hobbs running a 11.39s 100m into a slight headwind in Hastings last year. On the same track in 2022 she broke her own national women's record. Photo / Paul Taylor
Zoe Hobbs running a 11.39s 100m into a slight headwind in Hastings last year. On the same track in 2022 she broke her own national women's record. Photo / Paul Taylor
Funding difficulties appear to have ended hopes that the replacement of the all-weather athletics track surface in Hastings will be done in time for the national secondary schools championships in December.
Zoe Hobbs running a 11.39s 100m into a slight headwind in Hastings last year. On the same track in 2022 she broke her own national women's record. Photo / Paul Taylor
The only all-weather track in Hawke’s Bay is used by Hastings Athletics for weekly club nights in the summer, for Hawke’s Bay Gisborne centre and national track and field meetings, schools athletics and for general public fitness, and is owned by the Hastings District Council and managed by the Regional Sports Park Trust.
Trust general manager Glenn Lucas said two applications for funding from the Lottery Community Facilities fund for about half the expected $800,000, had been declined.
Having raised much of the rest from other grant sources, a third application will be lodged, in the hope the track and can be laid in 2026, but time has run out in terms of getting the work done, which would have been as soon as possible after the 2024-2025 track and field season mid.
It is also possible some grant funding will have to be returned if it can’t be used within applicable timeframes.
Runner Nick Willis helps open the new Hastings track in 2008, soon after winning a 1500m bronze medal at the Olympic Games jn Beijing. Photo / NZME
Hastings Athletics chairman Andrew Orme says the delay is frustrating, but he can appreciate the difficult economic times.
He said replacing the surface on an all-weather track might not be the most “sexy” or appealing to sponsors, but it does have a community-good role to play in addition to being a venue for higher performance athletics.
The multiple disciplines of athletics are a pathway to success in other sports.
The children’s North Island Colgate Games were held at the park this year, and, like the secondary schools championships last held in Hastings in 2010, attract over 3000 people.
They comprise 1300-1400 competitors, plus coaches, managers and officials, and family and friends calculated at an average of more than two extras per athlete.
Among them are many future national and international champions across numerous sports.
Notable moments on the current track include sprinter Zoe Hobbs breaking of her own New Zealand women’s 100m record at the track’s annual Potts Classic in 2022, Tiaan Whelpton’s equalling of the men’s resident record at the national track and field championships 12 months later, and current teenaged star Sam Ruthe’s 3000m win on February 1, at age 15 the youngest-ever New Zealand senior athletics champion.
Ruthe, now in international demand and having run world-best age-group middle-distance times, could be back in December as a first-year schools championships senior, tackling the senior boys 1500m record set by Hastings runner and coach Richard Potts in 1989.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 52 years of journalism experience, 42 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
