The club finished third at the national road relay championships on the Takahe to Akaroa course on Saturday.
It was the club’s — and indeed Otago’s — first men’s A grade medal at the event in 25 years.
Hill City-University led through the first three legs of the 76.6km course, before the class of Wellington Scottish and University of Canterbury shone through.
The two northern teams had too much firepower down the stretch and finished a comfortable distance ahead of Hill City-University.
Wellington Scottish claimed gold in 4hr 10min 58sec, while University of Canterbury was second in 4hr 11min 42sec.
Hill City-University crossed the line in 4hr 17min 14sec.
Jared Monk got the team off to a strong start, which was carried on by Caden Shields and Jacob Priddey.
Kirk Madgwick held on well on the fourth leg, although at the change-over the other two front runners had caught up.
That made for a fight among three of the race’s top runners in Oli Chignell (Hill City-University), Daniel Balchin (UC) and Nick Horspool (Wellington Scottish).
They battled a stiff wind along the longest leg of the course as they stuck with each other, before sprinting to the next change-over.
Chignell and Horspool arrived at the same time, while Balchin was 10sec back.
However, the depth of the two opponents showed through the next two legs and Hill City-University slipped further back.
That left Josh Baan with too much too much to do on the final leg, and bronze was the result.
Meanwhile, in Dunedin, the summer track and field season got under way at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday.
It was on the track that the tightest contests of the day took place.
Joccoaa Palmer and Tara McNally also had a tight battle in the women’s 100m, Palmer claiming victory by a hundredth of a second in 13.24sec.
In the men’s race Felix McDonald ran 11.41sec to claim victory in a tightly fought 100m from Timothy Horton (11.43sec) and Nathan MacDonnell (11.47sec).
McDonald also delivered a jump of 7.19m to claim his first long jump win of the season.
Sarah Langsbury was the top-placed woman, with a jump of 5.16m.
In Auckland, Dunedin runners claimed the top two spots in the national 24-hour championships.
Greg Yee ran 187.6km to edge Croydon Paton, who ran 182.4km.
