Colgate Games a Roil occasion in Hastings

FAMILY AT PLAY: Colgate Games children's athletics hopefuls Hannah Roil, 7, Jonty, 10, and Charlie, 12, with Dad Damian Roil at the William Nelson track. Photo Duncan Brown

The Colgate Games athletics have been a feature of family holidays in New Zealand for almost 40 years and it will be just the same for the Roil family when the three-day North Island games start in home-town Hastings on Friday.

It comes with a special edge for 12-year-old sprinting hope Charlie Roil, who with five medals from four Colgate Games' to date is still after gold.

But it's not just the gold he's after. As father Damian Roil helped prepare the William Nelson track at the Regional Sports Park, the youngster said: "I want to beat my dad".

His father is also a veteran of competing at the Colgate Games, having won two silver medals in the 100m and 200m sprints in Wellington about 30 years ago.

The Lindisfarne College pupil isn't taking it lightly - he started training in September for the weekly Hastings club nights and this weekend's games. He could be among the busiest of about 1350 young athletes from 93 clubs, mainly around the North Island but including at least one from Australia in 8-year-old Kade Robinson, of Cairns.

With bronze medals in the 10yr boys' 200m and 400m in Wellington in 2015, and silver medals last year in two relays as well as the 400m at the South Island Colgate Games in Nelson a week later, Charlie faces a busy programme this weekend, in the 100m, 400m, 800m and long jump, and the 4x100m and medley relays he could be competing about 12 times if he gets through to the finals in each event.

It will be even busier for the family, also represented by Hannah, 7, hoping to get her first pennants, the prize for children aged 7-9yrs grades, and 10-year-old Jonty, tackling the medal grades for the first time, before joining a mainly Auckland team for the transtasman children's athletics challenge in Sydney next week, retracing steps taken by Charlie two years ago.

"Sport certainly brings families together," said their father.

The Colgate Games, were first held in 1978 and carry possibly the longest-standing sponsorship arrangement in New Zealand sport, have established a multi-generational following, including some of whom grew to become top international performers, including Olympics and World champion shot putter Valerie Adams and 2008 and 2016 Olympics 1500m medallist Nick Willis.

Competitors in the Colgates' twilight years of ages 13 and 14 also vie for the Nick Willis Scholarships, with four awarded at both the Hastings games and the South Island Colgate Games in Invercargill next week. Hastings athletes have claimed scholarships in three of the four year since they were introduced.

The Games rotate around all-weather track venues in the North Island, attracting about 5000 visitors, with brothers, sisters, mums, dads, cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents supporting the young athletes.

When last held in Hastings in 2011, the Colgates Games was one of the first events held on the new track, built to replace Nelson Park, where the games were last held in 2004 and which is now the site of a large shopping centre.