Athletes throughout the district will benefit from further track and field facilities developed on the grounds beside Wānaka’s Recreation Centre.

Driven by the enthusiasm of the Aspiring Athletes Club (AAC), two permanent throwing circles for discus and shotput have been added to the grounds alongside the 400m lined, oval running track and a long jump pit. 

A special opening ceremony was held last Thursday (November 4) to celebrate the extraordinary community effort to build the new facilities, and women’s shot-put silver medalist (1970 Commonwealth Games) Barbara Beable cut the ribbon.

“We now have a fully functioning discus circle with safety cage and also a shot-put circle with stop board. Both of these are huge assets to our Athletics Club,” AAC president Kirsten Wyatt said.

While the purpose built throwing circles are the inspiration of AAC they wouldn’t have been completed without the assistance of many willing community hands, she said.

Last year, when visiting Southland Athletics coach Chris Knight offered his experience to help the club develop concrete throwing circles, the club took the concept to the Queenstown Lakes District Council for permission to proceed.

The council’s reaction was “very positive”, Kirsten said, and approved the locations of the concrete circles and safety cages.

AAC committee members gathered to build the safety cages around the concrete throwing circles.

Covid restrictions, weather, sourcing supplies and other factors meant the project took several months to pull together but over time the club had lined up Central Machine Hire to clear and prepare the sites; Extreme Roofing to provide the scaffolding pipes for the cage; and AAC committee members to sort the concrete and set the finished cages in place.

Kirsten said when the club realised it didn’t have the funds to purchase and import proper discus throwing cages from Australia (as other clubs had done) she turned to her children’s grandfather for help.

“We had to get a little creative,” she said, and grandad Gerald McDonald had the skills, the motivation and know-how to design and build cages which met health and safety requirements from scaffolding pipes and chain link fencing.

“He cut and welded the pipes to make eight separate frames, stretched the fencing between each frame to create the cage and then used a miniature crane (which he had also made himself) to hoist them up in our driveway to ensure they all fit together.”

Chris Knight traveled up from Invercargill and the concrete was poured on September 22 and the cages were erected a month later on October 31.

“This has really been a labor of love and community support to finish this project,” Kirsten said.

When AAC relocated from the Mount Aspiring College sports grounds to the grounds between the Recreation Centre and Three Parks New World in 2018 it had 37 registered athletes.

Now it has 130 registered members and dreams of a future which potentially includes an all-weather track and stadium at the future council sports facilities proposed for the former Ballantyne Road oxidation ponds site.

Kirsten said there were a number of other key elements the club would like to have, such as an all-weather run up for the long jump, an apron for the high jump and track timing mechanisms, but current fundraising is aimed towards this ultimate goal of a stadium shared with many sports codes.

“With the addition of the new throwing circles, Three Parks is now a perfectly suitable location for our club while we work towards fundraising for our ultimate goal of an all-weather track and stadium at Ballantyne Road.” 

PHOTOS: Supplied