Thursday, October 5, 2017
Ross McCullough
THE running of Opotiki District Council’s only sports event for the year, the Dunes Dash and Half Marathon, a fundraiser for the Opotiki Lions Club wasn’t possible on Saturday due to a combination of adverse weather and lower than expected entries.
Opotiki i-SITE acting manager and events co-ordinator Joseph Hayes said it wasn’t only the low entries, but the poor weather leading up to the annual event that played a factor in the cancellation.
“It’s always disappointing if we have to cancel something especially with the effort that goes into it,” he said.
Mr Hayes said the weather was forecast to be quite bad on Sunday so it was the right call to make especially, for the 15 Lions Club members who would have been out in the weather marshalling the event.
And he believes the low numbers entered for the event this year was due to the atrocious weather leading up to it putting people off.
Numbers for the event last year were quite a bit higher, he said.
Altogether there were 120 people who entered the event last year, with 63 of them having registered online before the day and about 30 taking their registrations into the i-SITE.
This year there were eight pre-registered entries online and 12 registrations brought to the i-SITE.
Mr Hayes said as it was a fundraiser for the Opotiki Lions Club, it would have been affected them most.
On the Opotiki District Council website, an explanation for the cancellation was given as low entries.
The council thanked those who had pre-registered and said they would be contacted directly to process refunds.
It apologised for any inconvenience.