Whangarei athletes took their first strokes - and in some cases steps - towards competing in next year's New Zealand Special Olympics in Dunedin at regional aquatic games at the Whangarei Aquatic centre over the weekend.
It was the first time that Whangarei has hosted an Aquatics Regional Games -a two-day qualifying event for the national games late next year..
There were a huge range of events held during the event from the developmental swimmers' 15m walk through to 200m swimming events.
The event attracted a total of 65 swimmers with 13 from Whangarei, eight from Auckland, seven from Counties, eight from Te Awamutu, 10 from the Bay of Islands, six from Howick-Pakuranga, seven from Tamaki, five from the Hibiscus Coast, and one from Thames Valley.
One of the highlights of the weekend was from Rachel Harvie from the Bay of Islands club who showed what determination can achieve. Harvie has an intellectual disability as well as a physical disability but still completed the 200m freestyle in 10 minutes 31.94 sec, while her fellow competitors all were faster than 3m 10.47s.
"Doug the Digger" aka Alister McIntyre who showed up to help, was so impressed with her effort that he went out to his vehicle to sign one of his Doug the Digger books and also gave her a Pink CAT hat.
Other highlights were the powhiri on Saturday morning and the official dinner on Saturday night.
Whangarei Special Olympics president Andrew Langford said the event went off well.
