Cooper Danks (left) starts the 2026 Napier Athletic Clubs centennial McKenzie Mile, which he won 50 years after grandfather John Danks won the event three times in the 1970s. Photo / Doug Laing
Cooper Danks (left) starts the 2026 Napier Athletic Clubs centennial McKenzie Mile, which he won 50 years after grandfather John Danks won the event three times in the 1970s. Photo / Doug Laing
A Napier teenager won the Napier Athletic Club’s centennial day feature event on Saturday, watched by a grandfather who won the race three times 50 years ago.
Cooper Danks won the McKenzie Mile on the club’s Marewa Park grass track, watched by John Danks, who won the event in 1975,1976 and 1977.
It was, however, with just five runners, four of them schoolboys, an era apart from the event’s heyday in the early 1960s, when it was first run.
That era was sparked by a dream of the late stalwart Roy Arrowsmith, who was determined to one day see a mile run at McLean Park in under four minutes.
Son Roger Arrowsmith, whose family on Saturday sponsored the first McKenzie Mile since it was last run in 2005, said it was also sparked by the appearance at the park in January 1961 of the first three finishers in the 1960 Rome Olympic Games 800m final, won by New Zealand star Sir Peter Snell.
Clashing over the imperial distance equivalent of 880 yards in front of a crowd of 7000 people, Rome bronze medallist George Kerr, from Jamaica, beat Snell, with 800m world record-holder, Rome bronze medallist and Belgian hero Roger Moens finishing in third place.
The McLean Park sub-four-minute dream was never requited, Snell claiming the track record at 4m 1.8s in 1965.
Cooper Danks (left) was the winner of the 2026 Napier Athletic Club centennial McKenzie Mile. He is pictured with his grandfather John Danks, the winner in 1975, 1976 and 1977. Photo / Doug Laing
The club, for many years known as the Napier Amateur Athletic and Cycling Club, moved to Marewa Park after the McLean Park Harris Stand fire that destroyed much of the club’s equipment and history in 1984.
Olympian Tony Polhill was a winner of the race in the 1970s, but as older athletes started graduating to Hawke’s Bay’s only all-weather track in Hastings, the race and the sponsored meeting in which it was included diminished.
On Saturday, the second and third placings went to schoolboys Flynn Dobson, of Napier, and Oscar Neville, of Central Hawke’s Bay.
Among those active in official duties at the sponsored centennial meeting were stalwarts Maurice Callaghan, Wayne Smith and Whetu Gray, who were all officials at the time of the 75th celebrations in 2001.
Among the visitors was Lesley Dawson, from Laura, South Australia, who competed with the club as Lesley Wellgreen and was motivated when she found a copy of a 50th anniversary programme and contacted the club.
Grant Birkinshaw back at the Napier Athletic Club, where he was a member when winning the national junior triple jump title, and in 1969 achieved the fourth-best long jump worldwide for an Under-20 athlete. Photo / Doug Laing
The celebrations were completed with a dinner, with former Olympian Diane Rodger (nee Zorn), one-time New Zealand junior triple jump champion Grant Birkinshaw, who in 1969 recorded the fourth-best long jump worldwide for an Under-20 athlete, and runner-turned-livestream commentator Holly Manning all returning to the club to take part in a panel discussion on the night.
