No Hawke’s Bay Sports Awards in 2024, but change is in the air

Former Karamu High School pupil and three-times winner of the Hawke's Bay Supreme Sports Award Aimee Fisher at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup in Hungary in May. Photo / David Balogh - Getty Images

Changes are in the air for the Hawke’s Bay Sports Awards in a year which could pose as one of the most challenging to pick in its 60-year history.

Not yet finalised, the changes are expected to mean there won’t be an awards ceremony in this Olympic Games year, although performances in 2024 will be recognised, when the ceremony takes place, most likely in January-February.

The 2023 awards were presented at the end of October, and the ceremony had been a regular gala-dinner event in the Pettigrew Green Arena in May from 2004 (a few months after the venue opened) until disrupted by the Covid era.

Sport Hawke’s Bay chief executive officer Ryan Hambleton said the organisation had been reviewing its awards programme, including the Central Hawke’s Bay awards that were held in May and the Hawke’s Bay Secondary Schools awards, which will be held in Hawke’s Bay Racing’s Cheval Room on October 16.

The schools’ awards rethink included the addition of awards for all-rounders in multiple sports, and for students as coaches.

Hambleton said among changes being considered for the Hawke’s Bay Sports Awards is the revertion to the January-December calendar year as a qualifying period, as is the case for the national Halberg Awards and some other regional awards.

It would remove an anomaly which has recurred occasionally over the years with such events as the Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games sometimes spanning the end of one qualifying period and the start of another.

While the review is not yet complete, Hambleton expects nominations will be called by the end of December, and the format for presentation of the awards is also being reviewed.

It is also likely the Hall of Fame recognition will be separated, with the hope of upgrading the Wall of Fame at the Pettigrew Green Arena.

Among current contenders are past multiple winners Emma Twigg, after winning a women’s single sculls rowing silver medal at the Paris Olympics, World champion canoeist Aimee Fisher, who set a World’s best K500 time in the World Cup final in May, beating fellow Kiwi and eventual Olympic Games winner Dame Lisa Carrington, World men’s indoor 1500 metres running champion and New Zealand record-breaking steeplechaser Geordie Beamish, teenaged golfer Zack Swanwick, the leading amateur and second New Zealander in the New Zealand Open golf championship and doing college golf in the US.

Twigg has won the award a record four times, in 2005, 2007, 2022 and last year, and Fisher won in 2016, 2018 and 2020.