Chasing a golden dream in sunny Hawke’s Bay

An annual children’s athletics meeting – probably the sporting springboard for more New Zealand Olympic medallists than any other sport – is set to be one of the major attractions in Hawke’s Bay in the remaining weeks of the summer holidays.

The opening of the children's North Island Colgate Games when they were last held in Hastings 2017. This summer's event, the third Colgate Games at the Mitre 10 Regional Sports Park, will be held on January 10-12, and over 1000 young athletes will take part. Photo / NZME

The North Island Colgate Games will be held at the Mitre 10 Regional Sports Park’s William Nelson Athletics Precinct on January 10-12, with more than 1000 budding athletes aged 6-14 running, jumping and throwing their way into careers across mainly other sports.

An annual event dating back almost 50 years and rotating around the Athletics New Zealand centres, it is, along with the South Island Colgate Games a week later in Christchurch, the consummate family holiday event.

Hawke’s Bay mum Becs Symes is a typical convert.

She competed as a youngster and remembers eventual All Black Caleb Ralph doing pretty well in running, from 400m to 1500m.

She’s now been through the Colgate Games with her children for 10 years on the trot, including Hastings’ last turn in 2017.

“We loved the travel, the teammates, the club support and the whānau you meet up with each year.”

It has come with the considerable bonus of success for daughter Hana. She has her last chance of adding to a haul that has had her on the dais 27 times since ending the 6-9 years pennant grades and entering the medal grades of heats, semifinals and finals as a 10-year-old.

With successes at 100m, 200m, 400m and the long and high jumps, she’s won 16 gold medals in individual events and three in relays, along with four silvers and four bronzes.

It is in those grades that the aspiration builds for many to start a teen-years pathway, not just in athletics, but in becoming All Blacks, Tall Blacks, Black Sticks, Black Caps, Black Sox, All Whites, Silver Ferns, White Ferns, winners of the Wimbledon final or the British Open, Formula 1 or whatever sporting ideal might meet their fancy.

The Hawke’s Bay Gisborne Athletics Centre clubs, from Gisborne to Dannevirke, will collectively have more than 100 athletes, 75 from the Hastings club. There will also be an army of ticketed officials from throughout the North Island, along with other volunteers, many of who will be on the oval throughout the day, from 9am to 7pm on Friday and Saturday, and to late afternoon on Sunday.

Centre chairman Rob Strong, who remembers going to a Colgate Games in Wellington when he was about 10, said most competitors would have family members and supporters with them.

The pressure will go on the accommodation sector, which also faces an influx of hundreds of other children and families for the Riverbend Cricket Camps, staged in mainly five-to-seven-day groups, on January 5-25.

Among other bigger events is the Napier Offshore Power Boat racing, which has drawn the plum spot of Auckland Anniversary weekend and the opening of the three-centres 2025 national drivers’ championship, with a new format of two races each day on January 25-26.

There are also outdoor concerts galore. However, one big event missing will be the Hawke’s Bay New Year Races, which became the New Year’s Eve Races in 2022. This year the event will not be held in Hastings because of the racecourse’s closure for track reconstruction.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today and has 51 years of journalism experience, 41 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues and personalities.