Thousands flock to Cooks Gardens for the 2025 Mitre 10 Mega Whanganui Tough Kid

Kaitoke School Year 4 students Tomas (left) and Lincoln took part in the 2025 Mitre 10 Mega Whanganui Tough Kid on November 21. Photo / Fin Ocheduszko Brown

About 2400 kids from the Whanganui Region’s schools flocked to Cooks Gardens to compete in the Mitre 10 Mega Whanganui Tough Kid.

Sunscreen was a must for Friday’s Tough Kid event, with the scorching sun shining down on the challenging obstacle course and a temperature high of 23C.

Students from 38 different schools raced against each other.

The annual contest, hosted by Sport Whanganui in collaboration with Mitre 10 Mega Whanganui, is broken into three events: the Quiet Hour, Tough Teen and Tough Kid.

The Quiet Hour and Tough Teen were held on Thursday with almost 1000 competing.

Sport Whanganui active recreation lead Quinn Hemingway said the two days had been “awesome, with great energy from the schools”.

Whichever school has the highest total points based on their students’ finishes at the end of the day is awarded the toughest school award.

Hemingway said it was too early to say what schools were performing the best on Friday when the Chronicle visited, with the first wave of races only just starting.

Whanganui City College won the Tough Teen event on Thursday.

Sport Whanganui chief executive Tania King said the most challenging obstacles on the course were the cobweb cargo-net and the truck, which kids had to go through towards the end as fatigue set in.

“It’s going really well, it’s all about getting as many kids participating, it’s not so much the competitive aspect,” King said.

“It’s great that there are so many whānau here as well.”

Kaitoke School’s Tomas and Lincoln said they both enjoyed their race in the Year 4 age group.

This year’s event was Tomas’ second outing and Lincoln’s first.

Lincoln said the trek up the Cooks Garden hill was the most challenging for him, and Tomas found the cobweb cargo-net the hardest.

Tomas won the Year 4 age group and said his brother won one of the Tough Teen races on Thursday.

Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.