By the rest of the country's standards we seemed to have escaped the worst of the rain and flooding over the last seven days.
People in the Coromandel and parts of Auckland, as well as many other areas, will be longing for the sun to come out again. Homeshave been flooded, there have been power outages, places cut off and stock deaths as three storms have hit the North Island over the past week.
For us the rain was still welcome for the land, even if it did cause a few problems. It seems hard to believe it was just a few short weeks ago that strong, hot winds were fanning flames on Waimarama Rd.
The downside of all this rain is the effect it can have on events, and organisers of both Horse of the Year and the annual Triple Peaks race would have been hoping for good weather. Alas, torrential rain overnight on Friday meant Saturday's events were always going to be a challenge.
The great thing is that the show literally went on. Triple Peaks organisers adapted the race to become Te Mata Peak three times.
This was a good thing because it allowed a truly amazing comeback story to unfold. Carla Bywater won her second Triple Peaks Challenge crown on Saturday. There were two year sbetween her victories because she had a bike crash and concussion kept her from work for six months. You can read this amazing story of courage on Page 23 of today's paper or on our website.
As for Horse of the Year, which we have comprehensively covered, it survived the wet start to the week, and apart from the cancellation of the cross-country event on Saturday, it seems to have been successful.
We will get the official numbers soon, but Hastings was buzzing with activity and our team covering the event says crowd numbers seemed good.
