A stunning effort on the final lap led Feilding Moa to its first win at the Victoria University cross-country relay at Kāpiti.
Wellington Scottish were favourites for the running event at Queen Elizabeth Park, Paekākāriki on Saturday. They had a bit of a point to prove after being pipped for line honours at the recent Shaw Baton relays by the juniors from Trentham.
But the four-person Feilding Moa team P Norty had their own plans, producing a great come-from-behind win to beat the favourites, and a milestone first victory for the club at this relay.
The run was on a 3.5km undulating course and Feilding got off to a great start with Harry Dixon recording the fastest lap of the day of 11 minutes 46 seconds, an 11-second gap over Wellington Scottish.
On the second and third legs Scottish took the lead, but Feilding’s Josh Dunstan-Brown and Samuel Stichbury limited the damage to 43 seconds sitting in third place behind Wellington Scottish and the impressive U20 Trentham United team. (those into athletics will have noticed NZ champion race walker Daniel De Toit in the Trentham team. He ran an impressive 12.28, among the fastest of the day.
Our final leg runner, George Varney, attacked his lap hard, running it in 11m 57sec, the third fastest of the day overall, and regained the lead with about 1.5km to go. He went on to give us the win 23 seconds ahead of Wellington Scottish.
Feilding Moa had other success on the day.
Our masters women 35-plus team of Karis Rae, Juanita Paterson, Wendy Cottrell-Teahan and Dorota Starzak finished second.
In the 2km individual races, Lucie Thomson was second in the under-10 race, older sister Mia won the under-12s, Will Sablerolle-Stone won the under-14 boys and Alix Gibson took out the U16.
