Entries increase for Queen Charlotte Relay
Competition for top placings in Saturday’s annual Queen Charlotte Relay is expected to be tight.
The 36th staging of the Marlborough Harrier Club event, one of the nation’s oldest, will see 48 teams run or walk from Picton to Havelock on Saturday. The first Queen Charlotte Relay was held in 1982 and it has been contested annually since then.
The course is broken up into five legs. The first leg takes competitors from Picton to Wedge Point, leg two runs from Wedge Point to Momorangi, leg three from Momorangi to Linkwater, leg four from Linkwater to Moenui, with the final leg taking the field from Moenui to the finish line in Havelock.
This year sees in increase in both walking and running teams. There will be six walking teams, up three from last year, and 42 running combinations, also up by three.
The Nelson senior men’s team are expected to be front-runners. Sam Mead, Mat Meffan, Kalani Sheridan, Jared Lautenslager and Angus Wemyss competed in the junior men’s grade for the past couple of years and will be hard to beat. The Athletics Nelson junior men’s combination of Jacob Bryan, Ben Baker, Fletcher Pickworth, Jacob Babb and Nick Matthews will also be near the front along with the Transition Coaching junior men’s team from Blenheim and the Marlborough Harrier Club quintet of Stephen Blackwell, Dave Vernon, Phil Taylor, Robbie Barnes and Ed Massey.
A change this year will see registrations and the race briefing being held at Picton School, taking congestion away from Waitohi Domain.
The event will cover several grades: open men, veteran men (35 plus), open women, veteran women (35 plus), junior men or women (19 & under), social runners (including mixed teams) and walkers. Walkers leave Waitohi Domain in Picton at 11.30am, with runners setting off at 1pm.