The Anzac Day Relays started at Victoria Park. Photo / Peter Jones
Sunny and still conditions at Victoria Park for the annual Anzac Day Relays provided a perfect start for the official opening of the 2026 Manawatū/Whanganui cross-country season.
Forty-one running and six walking teams lined up at the start and, although below the large number of entries in decades past, it was a significant increase on recent years. The spectator-friendly 1km lap, with four runners completing two laps each, is a popular format and, because each team member runs only 2km, provides opportunities for athletes from all track and field disciplines to be part of a team.
The visiting Palmerston North Athletics and Harrier team of Hayden Robinson, Daniel Miller and well-performed junior athletes Jarvis Shaw and Justin Cunningham (New Zealand under-18 champion last year) were first across the line, 39 seconds ahead of a Whanganui High School team of Sean Frieslaar, Xavier Brotherton, Bruce McGregor and former student Damian Hodgson. The Egmont team from Taranaki was third with Moa from Feilding fourth and Cullinane Boys fifth.
A feature of the afternoon was the encouraging number of school combinations. Hopefully our school-age athletes picked up on the special nature of relays and Whanganui schools might be able to field teams at the Inter-Regional Relays held the day after the New Zealand Schools Cross Country Championships in Wellington in June.
The women’s relay was won by the Moa Club from Feilding. The team of Dot Starzac, Olivia Leckie, Madi Honeyfield and Ava Oatway finished 12 seconds ahead of Palmerston North with the Whanganui Harrier Club team of Sally Gibbs, Danica Watson, Ataahua Wilson-Winterburn and Ohana Lambert third.
Egmont had a clean sweep in the two-person walks relay. The Taranaki club won the male, female and mixed walks divisions. The host Whanganui Harrier Club finished second in the male and female divisions.
The great weather and the fact Anzac Day fell on a Saturday certainly contributed to the excellent number of entries. The holiday falling over a weekend, however, did not help Whanganui Collegiate as many student boarders were home and others involved in winter codes were competing in weekend matches. I suspect Nga Tawa might also have been similarly affected.
Whanganui Collegiate was able to put together a mixed team that finished 14th of 41 teams and was the leading mixed team. Noah Orlowski impressed in the first leg, finishing at the head of the field. Other team members were Maya Hall, Millie Boden-Cave and Harry Wilkinson-Smith who, like some other afternoon runners, had joined 130 others at parkrun at 8am.
Mixed relays and sports have increasingly become part of major events, including the addition of a mixed 4x400m relay at Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games in July.
Athletics New Zealand recently announced a strong mixed 4x100m relay squad for the 2026 World Athletics Relays in Gaborone, Botswana. The team of Zoe Hobbs, Tiaan Whelpton, Brooke Somerfield, Lex Revell-Lewis, Georgia Hulls and Hayato Yoneto makes history as the first New Zealand team to compete at the championships.
The team will contest the mixed 4x100m relay, an event making its second appearance at the World Athletics Relays. The event follows a fixed format of man, woman, man, woman. The team qualified in Auckland at the beginning of April and, with an extended squad, will travel to Potchefstroom, South Africa, for a pre-camp before heading to Botswana.
The team will compete in the heats on May 2 and either the B-final or the championship final on May 3, pending successful progressions. The top 12 teams, comprised of the eight finalists and the top four in the B-final, will earn qualification to the 2027 World Athletics Championships in Beijing, China.
One of the great barriers in athletics was shattered at the weekend in London when Sabastian Sawe (Kenya) became the first man to run a sub-two-hour marathon under race conditions at the London Marathon (1h 59m 30s). Elliot Kipchoge of Kenya ran 1h 59m 40s in 2019 but Kipchoge ran with a specific team of pacemakers in formation as part of an Ineos-backed effort that was part science experiment.
The first three finishers in London were inside the old world record on a history-making day. It is a sobering thought that no athlete running in the Anzac Relays could match Sawe’s marathon pace for just 2km.