HBHS 3rd School in 2010 Motu Challenge
Mr Gavin Lanam reported that the team from HBHS underwent change in the last week of Term 3. It is a point of pride that this hastily assembled team still managed to beat the Open mixed team full of elite athletes that came second overall last year. Special thanks are due to Sam Gaze (Yr 10) and especially Stephen Brunskill (Yr 11), who literally filled in at the last possible hour.
On Race Day, Saturday 9th October, the competitors had a 7.00am start. The starting team included Sam Gaze (Yr 10), the youngest competitor in the race, Mountain Biking 65 km over three very large hills. Sam overcame a minor crash and a resulting equipment breakage, battling through pouring rain and strong winds to finish the first leg in 14th place overall and 2nd school by 11min 23 s. At this stage we were 3 min 2s in front of the Tauranga Boys’ College rider. Sam handed over to Asher Cook (Yr 13), the only member of the team to have raced this course before.
Asher put in a blistering run to post the seventh fastest run of the entire field. He covered the 17.5km 20 seconds faster than last year, in wetter, mushier racing conditions. Asher took more than twelve minutes out of the Trident High School runner’s lead, overhauling him to put HBHS in front. The Tauranga runner (recently returned from the world Junior Cross Country Championships) put in a very similar effort so that at the handover between Asher and the road cyclist, Stephen Brunskil (also Yr 10), Tauranga had a 35 second lead, with a further few seconds back to Trident.
Stephen was one of the smallest and youngest riders in the field, but he produced a very pleasing solo ride to post the fifth fastest time of the entire field, gaining a three minute advantage over a hilly 52 km course from Motu Village, through Matawai, then into blustery head winds over the infamous 700m Traffords Hill on State Highway 2. Stephen motored to the Kayak transition in the Waioeka Gorge.
At the Kayak transition George Gwynn (Yr 13) faced the prospect of racing further than he’d ever paddled before, on 27km of low and slow river, and being chased by two far more experienced paddlers who both posted very fast times in the previous year’s race. George held out for several kilometres, finally being passed by the much-improved Tauranga competitor, and then Trident’s paddler (the fastest school racer by five minutes last year), just a couple of kilometres from the end of the leg. George picked up a minute or so in the last 8km ride and 3km run, to cross the line with the rest of the team in third place, posting the third fastest school’s multisport leg time.
The final times were HBHS - 8:08:11(11th), Trident HS - 8:03:01(10th), TBC - 7:48:41(7th), with a margin of under 20 min after 172km of racing in four disciplines and all sorts of weather. HBHS was the third School team and eleventh overall finishers out of 137 teams.