Pareddown Winter Games planned

CANNING this year’s Winter Games New Zealand would have been ‘‘the easy option’’.

But chief executive Marty Toomey said the organisers needed to run the event, in part to honour Sir Eion Edgar, who had the vision for the event and was a critical part of it, right up until he died last month.

Toomey confirmed a truncated, ‘‘small but spectacular’’ event would go ahead this year, featuring a two and fourstar freeride event at The Remarkables, part of the Freeride World Tour Qualifier, and a ‘‘oneoff, oneday Big Air spectacular’’ at Cardrona.

The freeride will be held on two days during a ‘‘weather window’’ between August 29 and September 2, while the Big Air is set for September 4.

Until 2018, the Winter Games were held every second year, but a decision to move to an annual event was led by Sir Eion.

Despite the impacts of Covid on international travel last year, organisers managed to pull together a newlook event, dubbed The Obsidian, a fourevent snowsports competition featuring three coed teams.

Toomey said they initially looked at running something similar this year, but with ‘‘Continental teams’’, featuring athletes from the Americas, Europe, Oceania and Asia, but closed borders prevented it.

Due to a lack of Australian athletes, a transtasman Obsidian was also ruled out — and due to their current battles with Covid ‘‘we’re just not sure who’s actually able to move around’’.

‘‘So the safest thing to do is go with those who we know are here, and that’s our local Kiwi talent.’’

Toomey said it would have been easy to put the event on ice this year and come back bigger and better in 2022.

‘‘But the one thing you know about Sir Eion, the easy options weren’t the best options — you had to explore every possibility.

‘‘That’s certainly a big part of why we want to run something this year . . . we need to honour the man who has given so much to the event and the region.’’

Toomey said organisers were working to ensure a viable future for the event.

‘‘We’ve got to make sure, like any organisation, we don’t spend what we don’t have.

‘‘In a year when it’s tough to get your international athletes, it makes it difficult to get sponsorship, so we’d rather put that forward to next year and have a huge event next year.’’

Sky Television was not interested in broadcasting the event live this year, but organisers would still capture content for the broadcaster, while major events funding had been rolled over to 2022.

‘‘It gives us an opportunity to deliver that international Obsidian next year when, hopefully, borders are open a bit more and people can move more freely around the world.’’ — Mountain Scene