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RICHARD AND ELINA USSHER CAME TO WAIKAREMOANA TO RACE THE GENESIS EN ERGY LAKE TO LIGHTHOUSE CHALLENG E: THEY LEFT AS FAMILY. BY JIM ROBINSON.

Going up to accept a race winner’s trophy is something Richard Ussher is well accustomed to, but at the Genesis Energy Lake to Lighthouse Challenge, even he was momentarily silenced.

Before the individual men’s winner was presented with the spectacularly carved trophy, local kapa haka group Te Rerenga Kotuku, sharply-practiced and kitted in traditional costume, belted out a powerful haka. It was full force stuff. For 30 seconds or so, Ussher stood stock still, face-to-face with the eye-balling warriors. It was electric – spine tingling - and that’s from out in the audience, let alone in Ussher’s shoes.

Haka over, the silence was crashing. You’d have heard the proverbial pin. Ussher stepped forward. A long pause, then: “It’s pretty hard to top that. It’s a pretty emotional thing to receive a welcome like that to the stage,” he said.

Ussher talked about the sense of community spirit, right through the race. He talked about “hanging out” and having races with the kids up at the tiny, remote settlement of Tuai, near the even more remote Lake Waikaremoana. He talked about being made welcome, from Tuai all the way down to the slightly less remote Wairoa. “It adds hugely to the event,” he said.

Indeed. Nobody in the audience of 600, competitors, supporters, local identities and iwi representatives, packed together into the Wairoa Community Hall on a stinking hot early Summer’s evening, could have disagreed with the fact. Over its two days and 185km of running, mountain biking, road cycling and kayaking, the Lake to Lighthouse Challenge revealed plenty of stunning terrain, around the lake as well as on local farmland and down on the Wairoa river valley. But more than that, it created – shared - a unique vibe.

The local communities had embraced the concept of ‘coming together’. They had made it an occasion, a celebration, a symbol that provincial New Zealand towns genuinely do offer something special and can still be winners. On the last leg of the race, a tough 16km run on roads and farm tracks around Wairoa, there were literally hundreds of people out on the streets: families at letterboxes and having picnics, kids with melting ice creams, elderly couples molded into old deck chairs, a young bloke with a pram, all giving encouragement or clapping competitors as they slugged past under the baking East Coast sun. Winners all.

When Ussher crossed the Wairoa race finish line alongside teams’ winners Gordon Walker and Dwarne Farley (ironically calling themselves ‘Washed Up’) there was a haka to mark the moment. “It was unbelievably good,” said Farley of the performance. “They had men and women. We just stood there, about a metre away. It was the best finish to a race I’ve ever had. It was powerful stuff. It made you proud to be a New Zealander.”

Ussher and the Washed Up duo finished together after a spur of the moment “gentleman’s agreement” not to duke out the last run. Walker and Farley had finished well ahead of Ussher on day one, so had the quicker overall time anyway. Somehow the pact was perfect, a symbol of friendship and mutual respect. You race alone, but you experience together; effort and pain are shared; so is the satisfaction of completion. Together.

“Finishing together was definitely the thing to do,” reckoned Farley. That said, right to the sweaty end, the local kids were backing Ussher – the adopted son – to surge away alone. “We were going through Wairoa and all the way the kids were shouting ‘go Richard Ussher, go Richard Ussher’,” Farley laughed.

“They were great days. It was the best event I’ve ever been involved in,” Farley said. “It’s an experience not a race. You felt like a rock star up in Tuai, all these kids following you around. My bike even disappeared for a while. These kids asked if they could ride my bike – the same with Rich. They were off with it. I just loved it.” Farley lives in Mt Maunganui, under 200km from Waikaremoana, but like so many of us, had never made the diversion to the lake before. “It was all new. I’d never been past the turnoff at Murupara. My mobile cut off. It was like you’d dropped off planet Earth!”

THE CHALLENGE BEGINS
Day one of the 2009 Lake to Lighthouse Challenge started at Tuai. Over 40 individuals and 75 teams lined up beside the chilly waters of lake Whakamarino, which is formed by a hydro dam commissioned in 1929. The first stage was just a short appetizer – a mostly uphill 15km mountain bike to Waikaremoana.

Ussher smacked it almost from the go. He was riding alone after just 3km. By the lakeside transition into the kayaks, Farley was at 30 seconds, with Marcel Hagener, Cam Durno and Neil Parkinson locked another two minutes back. In the women’s race, 2008 Lake to Lighthouse winner Elina Ussher led Sia Svendsen of Christchurch by a few seconds, with Louise Mark and Emma McCosh (both Auckland) a bit further back.

Waikaremoana means ‘sea of rippling waters’ and so it proved. The lake was choppy in places, legacy of a fresh wind that had organiser Chris Joblin hemming and hawing to the last minute whether to cancel the stage. Fortunately he didn’t because all but a few handled the conditions without undue stress. Besides which, the scenery was superb – except for the uncomfortable fact you could see how damned far you had to run...

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Results: www.laketolighthouse.co.nz

STORY BY + JIM ROBINSON
PHOTOS COURTESY + IAN TRAFFORD + SPORTZHUB