Trophy's colourful past

The Hinemoa Swim Trophy will be up for grabs tomorrow evening during the Blue Lake Multisport Festival. Pictured is festival director Nicola Muggeridge with the trophy. Photo / Ben Fraser

It has undergone some big changes over the last 50 years, but the historic Hinemoa Swim event is still making a splash in Rotorua.

Rotorua Daily Post sports reporter Gary Hamilton-Irvine takes a look at the history of the event which will be staged again this weekend during the 30th Blue Lake Multisport Festival.

When the Coastguard stepped in and started pulling swimmers out of Lake Rotorua during a weather-disrupted Hinemoa Swim event, it all but spelled the end of the swim on Rotorua's largest lake.

Local athlete Ray Lichtwark took part in the event that year which he recalls to have been around the late 1980s.

"The weather was a bit rough that day and it got worse within about 20 or 30 minutes of everyone starting out.

"The water really got up and there was about 70 or 80 swimmers in the water, and in a short time they were spread out across about a kilometre.

"So the Coastguard said we are pulling the pin on it.

"They started from the back and picked everyone up. I think only three swimmers had finished when they picked everyone up.

"I was a bit disappointed because I was having one of my best swims, and was only a few hundred metres away from the finish when they pulled us out of the water."

That marked the last time the Hinemoa Swim was held on Lake Rotorua, according to Lichtwark, who would later help start it up again on Tikitapu (Blue Lake).

The swim was originally designed to follow a similar path to the one taken by Hinemoa, who legend states swam about 3km from the eastern side of Lake Rotorua to Mokoia Island, to meet her lover Tutanekai.

While there is differing reports on when the first Hinemoa Swim was staged, the Hinemoa Swim Trophy (also known as the Mt Cook Airline Trophy) was donated in 1970. That suggests the event could have started even earlier perhaps in the 1960s.

Rotorua's Ngaire Lee was a regular at the event, with two of her children, during the 1970s and said it was an excellent event attracting people from all over the Bay of Plenty.

"Bay of Plenty Swimming started it off a long time ago, but the lake got pretty grotty and they had to stop it," Lee said. "There was quite a lot of people who would take part. They came from all around the Bay."

She said they would leave from the eastern side of the lake and would swim to Mokoia Island before having a picnic and catching a boat back to the main land.

Lee said after the event finished up in the late 1970s or early 1980s, because of water pollution, she looked after the main trophy at her home for the best part of a decade.

"I had the trophy at home for donkey's years, maybe eight or nine years ... then when I heard it had been moved to the Blue Lake I went and gave it to the council so it could be used again."

Unknown to Lee, another version of the Hinemoa Swim was started up in the 1980s, following a similar route on Lake Rotorua.

However, this route started on Mokoia Island and headed back to Hannah's Bay area, a reverse of the original course. Lichtwark said that event ran for the best part of five or six years before a run-in with the Coastguard ended it.

Lichtwark explained in the early 1990s the Rotorua Association of Triathletes and Multisport (RATs), of which Lichtwark was a past president, asked the council for permission to use the Hinemoa Swim Trophy for their cross-the-lake event.

That saw the Hinemoa Swim re-instated to Blue Lake at the annual Blue Lake Multisport Festival.

The Hinemoa Swim Trophy has since been competed for since 1994 at the festival, and awarded to the first female home in the 2km swim (who competes without a wetsuit).

The trophy will be up for grabs again tomorrow, at 5pm, during this year's Festival.