Athletics: Overdue Caversham celebrates in style

The golden winter season for Caversham continued on Saturday, with dual victories in the Peninsula Relay.

Celebrations had barely settled on Ron Cain's life-membership award from Athletics New Zealand when the club's relay teams scored both line and fastest-time honours in the eight-leg 38.5km event encompassing the Otago Peninsula and Otago Harbour area.

The Caversham White team of Andrew Harper, Ken Fahey, John Landreth, Ian McDonald, Olivia Robb, Ken McDonald, Peter Hughes and Maria Sleeman achieved a hard-fought victory from a handicap of 24min.

The event is one that the Caversham club has not had a lot of success in over the years, featuring occasionally in the minor places.

Only two of Saturday's winning team members, Fahey and Sleeman, had been successful previously.

For them, it had been a long wait to witness their club prosper in the event once again.

Sleeman was a member of the Caversham women's team in 1995, the last team from the club to strike gold.

Before that, Fahey was a member of the victorious 1983 team.

Sleeman, who took the baton for the final leg from Broad Bay to Macandrew Bay, just after Hughes had pulled the team into the lead, admitted to being full of nerves, wondering how far teams were behind her and which ones were coming through to challenge.

"We were overdue," Sleeman said of the victory on Saturday.

Fahey was thrilled to be part of the winning formula for his club.

"It doesn't happen that frequently to a runner like me. I'm just a journeyman," he said.

Team captain John Landreth was thrilled with the performance, although he wasn't so sure his team would kick on after he struggled a little into a strong wind on the second leg between Sheil Hill and the Soldiers Memorial.

"My run was hardly a captain's knock," he said.

"But the team pulled through and it's nice to be part of it. Everyone ran really well."

The diversity of the Caversham team was such that father and son Ian and Ken McDonald impressed in assisting the team into contention by the end of the penultimate seventh leg at Broad Bay.

Ian, who is rarely lost for words, admitted to being a little speechless after the team's victory.

"I didn't expect this to happen. I'm lost for words, but I'm very proud of Ken's run.

"He made up for my age and shortcomings," Ian said of the run from his son on the 7km run from Cape Saunders to Portobello that put front runners in sight of Hughes.

The team had barely gathered in celebration when the club's talented senior men's team of Bevan Stevens, Mitch Hopping, Daniel Balchin, Robert Brown, Lyndon Brown, Tony Payne, Glen Sutton and John Schreuder crossed in fourth place to clinch fastest time hours, recording 2hr 8min 29sec and achieving a rare line honours and fastest time double for the club in the event.

Despite Caversham's drought of victories in the event over the years, it had achieved this feat once before.

In 1977, its senior men's team took both line and fastest-time honours, before going on to win the silver medal at the national road relay that year.

The Hill City senior men's No 1 team, which finished second on Saturday, was second fastest, recording 2hr 10min, and the Ariki senior men were third fastest in 2hr 10min 50sec.