Hero photograph
 
Photo by Dayna Turnbull

Wandering Doves

Miss D Turnbull and Miss J Reid —

Gold for our Senior Stars! Isabel Gallagher, Laura Sammut, Sophie May and Jaime Reid competed in the grueling Kaikoura Adventure Race and claimed an impressive first place overall in the Secondary School Teams Division.

This event was held on the 24th of April and had over 600 competitors racing. Including ex-students Caitlin O'Brien, Emily Prout and Phoebe Ozanne who finished an amazing 4th place in the women’s open division racing against legends such as Gemma McCaw on this absolute beast of a course. Columba College is super proud of our students to have achieved finishing the event, let alone doing so well. Congratulations, Sophie, Isabel, Laura and Jaime! 

Sports Prefect and team member Jaime Reid reports -

Our team participated in the 12-hour category, which started off with a 400m swim in the sea at 7.00 am. This was followed by mountain biking to the first rogaining course. This course consisted of route planning and navigation between 13 checkpoints in the mountains surrounding Kaikoura. This leg of the race took our team seven hours to complete after we were caught out at the top of a mountain in thick mist, wind and rain. We jumped back on our bikes and rode to the next rogaining course on a farm at Mount Fyffe. By the time we had arrived, it was already getting very dark, which added to the challenge. We headed off into the bush with our head torches on, looking for the next set of checkpoints. After walking through mud, sliding down steep hills and navigating our way back to our bikes we headed to the final stage at Kaikoura High School. The bike to the school was pitch black and took around an hour and a half to complete. Our team had been going for more than 12 hours now and we were excited to be nearly finished. We smashed out the orienteering stage at the school, sprinting to all of the checkpoints. Our team finished the race at 9:22 pm with a race time of 14hrs 22mins winning the secondary school girls teams division overall. It was such an exciting experience and pushed all four of us out of our comfort zones.