Rowing: Holders forced to fight for title

The Blue Lake Rowing Regatta was held at the weekend, with almost 700 rowers taking part. Pictured is the Rotorua under-16 girls coxed quad crew (from left) Maya Cuff, Akiwa Ngatai, Hannah Hughes, Taila Marshall and Shelby Cuff. Photo / Ben Fraser

Whakatane Rowing Club successfully defended their title at the annual Blue Lake Rowing Regatta, but not without some tight competition.

The Rotorua Rowing Club and St George's Rowing Club from Auckland gave Whakatane a good run for their money at the weekend on Tikitapu (Blue Lake).

Twelve clubs and almost 700 rowers, competed on Saturday and Sunday with each club collecting points with podium finishes in the A finals.

Scoring was broken down to five points for a first place finish, three points for second and one point for third.

Whakatane topped the points tally on 75 points, followed by St George's on 73 and Rotorua on 70.

Rotorua Rowing Club captain Glen Reichardt said it was extremely close and their team almost won the title for the first time in about a decade.

"It was pretty close and the lead changed probably every half an hour in the afternoon. We had the lead at one stage and we thought we would steal it an hour from the end."

But it was not to be, with Whakatane successfully defending the Dewar Challenge Shield.

The Dewar Challenge Shield - which has been competed for since 1904 - is the grand prize at the annual regatta and is one of the oldest trophies in New Zealand sport.

It went missing in the 1960s for about four decades and is now kept safely at the Rotorua Rowing Club.

The winning club at the regatta each year get to take photos with the trophy but can not take it home.

Rotorua's composite men's eight were in great form at the regatta winning the final race on Sunday - the men's open coxed eight - by about five boat lengths.

The crew are building up for the national club champs in Twizel next month where they will try and produce a top result on the national stage.

The Rotorua and Whakatane clubs organise the Blue Lake regatta each year, and Reichardt said it was a huge success at the weekend.

He said the weather was excellent, the numbers were good, and there were more entries for each event. He also said the wasp population was almost non-existent this year.

He said in the last five or six years they had quite a few problems with people being stung by wasps at the lakefront, but it seemed that problem had been sorted out this year.

"It has been a real problem in the past. One of the clubs got 30 wasp stings one year and we had one club say they were not coming back because of the wasps. So hopefully now that it has been sorted it will reflect in the numbers coming back."

Reichardt said a big thank you to all the volunteers who helped run and organise the event at the weekend.