Big sports events attract 3300 athletes to Hawke's Bay this weekend

The standout performance at the last secondary school championships held in Hastings seven years ago was a world junior shot put record for 15-year-old Jacko Gill.

Two of the biggest sports events in Hawke's Bay this year will be held on the same weekend with apparently no serious problems for people seeking accommodation.

The New Zealand Secondary Schools athletics championships will be held at the Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park in Hastings on December 1-3, while the Ironmaori Half will be held on Saturday, December 2.

The two events will have a combined total of more than 3300 competitors, including the 1314 students in the track and field championships who come from 210 schools throughout the country, with small numbers from the Cook Islands, Niue and Fiji.

Secondary Schools Athletics Association chairman John Tylden and Hastings athletics chairwoman Sheree Jones said yesterday they had not heard of any schools struggling to find accommodation, although that may be a problem for other family members.

When the championships were last held in Hastings in 2010 it was calculated that for each individual competitor there was an average of at least two other visitors.

Among the accommodation being used this time are school hostels such as that at Napier Boys High School, where about 50 from three schools will be moving in for the weekend almost as soon as the last of the year's boarders move out.

The championships in Hastings seven years ago was the first big event on the regional sports park track built to replace an all-weather track at Nelson Park, which had been closed for redevelopment of the site as a shopping centre, now the home of big-box retailers including The Warehouse, Mitre 10, Briscoes and Rebel Sport.

The standout performance at those championships was a world junior shot put record for 15-year-old Jacko Gill, who seven months later became the youngest male to win a Junior World Championships gold medal, surpassing the achievement in 2002 of later athletics superstar Usain Bolt.

Mr Tylden yesterday recalled that much-awaited achievement by Gill, who won the Junior World title three times, at the age of 16 broke a New Zealand senior record that had stood for 44 years, and represented New Zealand at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2016 Olympic Games.

The schools athletics championships are recognised as the biggest athletics event in New Zealand. In numbers they stand alongside the North Island Colgate Games for 7-to-14-year-olds, but are out on their own in terms of the level and depth of competition.

Several athletes will be looking for World Junior Championships qualifying performances, with some likely to be propelled into Commonwealth or Olympics competition within four to six years.

Championships records show numerous world-standard achievements over the years, among them the junior girls' 100m record set by Briar Toop, of Havelock North, in 1987, and the senior boys' 1500m record set by Nick Potts, of Hastings, two years later, the only two national secondary schools athletics championships records currently held by athletes from Hawke's Bay schools.