Sporting successes celebrated
It’s been a memorable year for South Canterbury’s athletes from Commonwealth Games gold medals to Meads Cup finals. Mark Quinlivan reports in part one of a three-part series wrapping up the region’s sporting achievements in 2018.
South Canterbury skated into the sporting record books early in the new year, setting the tone for a large number of sporting achievements for the region in 2018.
A South Canterbury speed skater set a national record as the hosts snared nearly a dozen titles on the opening days of the New Zealand Speed Skating champs at Levels Raceway.
Skating doyen Bill Begg described Tasha McAuley’s performance on January 3 as a ‘‘clean sweep’’, with a perfectly timed lunge helping her to beat team mate and fellow South Cantabrian Ella Benson in a photo finish, to claim the 5000m points race title. McAuley posted a record time of 1.43.295 in the victory. Another South Cantabrian, Charli Nevin, finished third.
Geraldine’s Ryan Marsden went from being a South Island champion to a national champion in a matter of weeks when he was crowned the New Zealand Saloon Car Champion at his home track, Woodford Glen Speedway, on January 7.
Having raced saloon cars for a decade, winning the national title was a great moment, and Marsden’s most distinguished effort.
Later in the month it was not so much a personal achievement, more a collective sporting achievement which was celebrated – when Timaru’s Levels Raceway celebrated 50 years.
Today’s venue is a far cry from the South Canterbury Car Club’s humble beginnings which would eventually lead to the land being purchased for the track in 1965.
In July 1965, the car club decided to purchase 35 acres of land at Falveys Rd, Levels, to establish a racing circuit.
It was originally land used for the Timaru airport terminal, and the air traffic control building was used by the club up until 15 years ago when it was demolished and replaced.
The previous track used by the club at Saltwater Creek had claimed many hours of back-breaking work with little to show for it, with only one meeting held each year.
The car club’s July 1965 meeting minutes stated, ‘‘With our new circuit, when completed, we should be able to draw some of the country’s top line drivers’’.
Levels Raceway didn’t just draw some of the country’s top line drivers when it opened in 1967, but some of New Zealand’s finest motorsport drivers were born and bred in South Canterbury.
Leo Leonard, to name one, first competed at Waimate in 1959 as a 19-year-old. He drove in a number of long-distance events, including the Benson and Hedges 500, and earned himself a place in a Ford Sierra Cosworth alongside fellow New Zealander Robbie Francevic in 1986 at Bathurst. His son, Mark Leonard, has been navigating for four-time Bathurst champion Greg Murphy in his rallying outings.
It was Leonard who got the celebrations underway, as he got back behind the steering wheel of the iconic PDL Mustang.
Leonard was out testing his original PDL Mustang, which he hadn’t raced in since 1974.
It seemed fitting he was at the raceway for the duration of the threeday 50th anniversary celebrations.
Most golfers consider a hole-in-one a once in a lifetime feat, but a Geraldine golfer achieved it twice in three days.