Ford Ranger New Zealand Rural Games celebrates a record-breaking weekend in Palmerston North

Te Marae o Hine Palmerston North’s Square hosted record-breaking events during the Ford Ranger New Zealand Rural Games this weekend.

About 42,000 people attended the three-day event where athletes competed across a range of rural sports, including wood chopping, coal shovelling, sheep shearing, gumboot throwing and egg throw and catch – with the latter two breaking New Zealand records.

New Zealand Rural Games founder Steve Hollander says, “It was a fantastic weekend for rural sports. The sun was shining all weekend, and we were lucky enough to see two New Zealand records broken.”

Riki Paewai and Kris Richards set a new record for the New Zealand Egg Throw and Catch at 66.3m – the first time it had been broken since 2016. The pair surpassed Brent Newdick and Luke Wainui’s 2016 record of 63.7m by a massive 2.6m!

New Zealand’s champion women’s gumboot thrower, Kristin Churchward, bested her New Zealand record with a 36.88m throw! Her previous record was 34.45m set in Queenstown in 2016.

Hollander says the weekend overall was a raging success.

“On Friday, we had 420 students attend our inaugural Westpac Agri Futures, and a further 240 students competed in the Allflex Clash of the Colleges. We wanted to introduce a youth focus to encourage young people in rural careers and rural sports.”

This year, we welcomed the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS® championships to Palmy – women, men and rookies competed over two days for the prime spot of representing New Zealand at the international champs.

“It was impressive and noisy with two-days of Timbersports competitions. It was fantastic to have greater numbers of timbersports competitors at the Games, especially the rookies and women competitors alongside the men – the public got to see the high level of professionalism in this sporting code,” said Hollander. A one-hour television programme will air on TV3 on March 27 at 5 pm.