Junior world rowing champion Emma Twigg and golfer Danny Lee are among four athletes in the running to win a $25,000 Halberg awards sports scholarship next year.
Twigg, the world under-23 single scull rowing champion and Lee, runner up at this year's junior world golf tournament in SanDiego are joined by cyclist Edward Dawkins and motor racing driver Brendon Hartley as finalists for emerging talent category.
Hartley, 18, won the 2007 Euro Cup Formula Renault Championship, beating some 50 drivers from five continents.
Dawkins finished second in the 1000m time-trial at this year's world junior championships, posting the fastest time recorded by a New Zealand rider.
The award, introduced this year, is designed to identify and reward potential Olympic and world champions.
It is limited to individual athletes who must not have achieved success at elite international level (Olympic, Commonwealth Games etc) or represented their senior national team.
Star multi-sport athlete Rebecca Spence took the award this year, after winning the world junior duathlon title in Canada and the world junior cycling time-trial in Belgium in the space of two weeks in 2006.
Spence used some of the scholarship to finance a trip to Europe in the hope of securing a place in the New Zealand triathlon team for next year's Beijing Olympics.
