Happy Tuesday for another week to you all,
Once again there is plenty to share - the first being the triple award catch at the BRT annual awards in Cambridge over the weekend - The Faces of Cycling Award was presented to our world champion Eddie Dawkins. Many of those in attendance at the awards encouraged and supported Eddie from his introduction to track cycling onwards, and the community as a whole share in his success. Then Cycling Southland was awarded the Road and Track Club of the Year, after another outstanding year of events, buoyed only by the mammoth ongoing support of our ever-willing volunteers who are the reason we can continue to achieve what we do!
The Shona Smith Trophy, which acknowledges an outstanding contribution to women’s cycling, was awarded to Erin Criglington. Erin continues to succeed at the highest level of cycling and is active in the sport at all levels, as an athlete, event official and volunteer. Erin is the current masters world champion in the women’s 40-44 2000m individual pursuit, and her overall efforts raise the profile of women’s cycling nationally and internationally.
Check out the full awards list here
But the awards are far from over for the week, with no fewer than 10 Cycling Southland representatives among the 35 finalists to feature at this Friday night’s ILT Southland Sports Awards. Featuring in the senior sportsperson category from cycling are Eddie Dawkins, Tom Scully and Gabby Vermunt, with Josh Haggerty and Jeremy Presbury lining up for the junior sportsperson award. Erin Criglington is up for Masters Achievement of the Year, the paracycling duo of Phillipa Gray and Laura Fairweather are again featured in the team category this year, while Ross Machejefski and Julian Ineson are up for coach of the year. Good luck to you all – and congratulations on becoming finalists for the year, we are all super proud of your efforts!
Helping Hands Wednesday 28 May
We need some help with moving items that belong to Cycling Southland as a result of being evicted from our storage shed at short notice. We’re after willing volunteers who are available tomorrow (Wednesday) from 9:30 am onwards. Please contact the Office if you’re available – all help is hugely appreciated!
Executive Musings - Meeting Monday 26 May
Bike NZ AGM: Following poor financial results in 2013/14 and change of senior management (mirroring Cycling Southland) they have renewed focus to both deliver both High Performance and engage with members to drive the sport up from grass roots, whilst living within prudent financial boundaries (also mirroring Cycling Southland!). Sentiment was more positive than previous years with centres unified of their agreement on alternating Elite and Club Nationals (recommendation to BRT), with Elites likely to be hosted in Invercargill January 2015.
Financial: Currently we locking down our annual budget (Gross Income of $800,000). It is a finely tuned process across all of our events, activities and divisions.
Events: The Crowe Horwath Corporate Pursuit and would benefit from a couple of extra teams to balance the draw so rattle the cage of your workmates at the smoko table and challenge another firm!
The SBS Bank Tour of Southland, Yunca Junior Tour budgets being confirmed and building momentum for the events, our members are travelling the world, performing and being acknowledged locally and nationally for their achievements - and spring is only 100 sleeps away already!
Members: Looking forward to sharing more detail at the members’ Club Meeting on Monday 9 June, at 7.30pm, and hearing your views, ideas and how we can all make a difference.
Meeting & Event Dates
Junior Division and Yunca – Junior Division will hold their monthly meeting this Thursday, at 7pm, followed by a Yunca committee meeting, at 7.30pm. All welcome
Cycling Southland Prizegiving – this will be held at the Ascot Park Hotel on Friday 6 June, from 7pm. A fun night out, with plenty of awards, nibbles and open bar. Get your tickets from of the office now for just $15 each – a night not to be missed!
Cycling Southland Club Meeting – this will be held on June 9, at 7.30pm, in the Sarah Ulmer Lounge – This is a great chance to get an update on what’s going on, meet Walter Lettink and Nick Longworth, and to learn about the opportunities for becoming more involved with club activities. Pencil it in your diary and we’ll look forward to seeing you there – all welcome!
Crowe Horwath Corporate Pursuit – Team Time Trial on Sunday 29 June, from 2pm, with the main event on Sunday 6 July. Anyone wishing to volunteer to help out can still do so by emailing me [email protected] – it’s a great fun couple of days to be involved with!
Sprint Squad
A reminder that this will be starting up again from Monday 7 July, 7-8.30pm. Expressions of interest to me please and if anyone is keen or able to facilitate this squad, we would love to hear from you please.
Junior & Senior Racing
A reminder that Senior Racing is on tonight from 7-9pm, but will be reduced to just 1 hour (7-8pm) during June due to Corporate Pursuit team training.
Junior Racing is also underway from 6-8pm this Friday again, but will not be held on Friday 6 June for the prizegiving. It will also then continue at the reduced 6-7pm slot during June until the completion of Corporate Pursuit.
Fundraiser for Nick
With all the big adventures and costs involved with many of our members exciting travel and representative experiences looming there are many fundraisers and ways to help out.
Check out Nick Kergozou’s next fundraising fun
South Island Masters Games
Timaru Cycling Club will be holding the South Island Masters Cycling events in October. Early bird regos are 1 July Check out the info here
Great article Nicole
Congrats to our Central Otago racing dynamo Nicole Shields on your great article in the paper last week – Read all about it here – it is certainly another extremely deserving and worthwhile local cyclist for a feature in the print media!
Well that’s it for another week – a reminder that the Winter Road Racing calendar will be out soon with racing scheduled to restart on Saturday 5 July – so watch this space.
Meanwhile, keep warm and happy and keep up the circuits on the boards where it is – at least – dry at this time of the year. Not hugely warm but still dry!
Take care for another good week ahead and our get well soon wishes to our racing troopers Wayne Miller and Brendan Akeroyd who certainly came out worse off for wear in the Taeri-Green Island Southern Series Race 5 on Saturday when howling gales took riders out resulting in breaks, cracks, bruises, skin loss and a terrifyingly high number of stitches holding poor Wayne together!! We are all thinking of you guys and wish you speedy recoveries and perhaps a more restful winter break than you anticipated as the damage heals!
Best wishes from us all!