Caversham is a hot favorite to complete a hat trick of wins when the 75th annual Lovelock Relay is held at the University Oval tomorrow.
Caversham has won the prestigious event, which celebrates Jack Lovelock's gold medal at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, for the past two years.
Caversham had a comfortable win over Ariki last year and three members of its six-man winning team - Hayden Donnelly, Peter Meffan, and Daniel Balchin - are back again.
They will be joined by Jordan Maynard, Shawn Burgess and Ben Anderson.
New Zealand junior 800m champion Glen Ballam, who was in the team last year, has been demoted to the B team.
This demonstrates the strength of the Caversham team.
But there will be a challenge from Ariki which has dominated the event this century.
The Lovelock Relay was first held in 1937. Ariki won the race for the first time in 1999 and had an uninterrupted reign until Canterbury University won three years in a row from 2006 to 2008.
Ariki was back in the winner's slot in 2009 before Caversham's two wins.
Ariki has a stronger team than last year, with its best runners being the in-form Nathan Baxter, Otago's top distance runner Dougal Thorburn, track specialist James List and Callan Moody, who won a silver medal in the New Zealand senior men's 3000m in Dunedin last summer.
The event was organised by the Otago University club for the first 74 years. The club combined with Hill City late last year and the combined club is organising this year's event.
The Hill City-University team of Andrew Davidson, Alex Gorrie, Keiran Cody, Mike Wakelin, Ben Jowsey and Caden Shields could upset the two favourites.
This will be Shields' first race in the event since returning home from his three-year athletics scholarship at Purdue University in the United States.
He is now a race-hardened runner.
None of the teams is expected to beat the race record of 24min 12.6sec set by the Otago University team in 1971.
The individual record of 3min 52sec was run by former New Zealand representative Andrew Stark (Canterbury University) in 1980.
The Otago University team of Hannah Newbould, Andrea Peat, Grace Fursdon and Barbara Roy beat Hill City to win the senior women's title in a record time of 19min 24sec last year.
New Zealand junior representative Rebekah Greene (Hill City-University) will be having her first race since recovering from the glandular fever that kept her out of track racing after Christmas.
The other members of her team are Shauna Pali, Christina Taylor and Bella Bloomfield.
Ariki's high school women's team of Anna Kean, Caitlin O'Brien, Sian English and Erin O'Brien is capable of running a competitive time in its event.
Lovelock Relay
75th running
Venue: University Oval.
Date: Saturday, May 5.
Start times: Senior women (2.45pm), senior men (3.15pm).
