The New Zealand Powerlifting Federation’s national championships in Invercargill have been abandoned a day into the five-day programme.
The championships attracted more than 200 entries, many of them from Auckland.
The event started on Tuesday but was cut short following the Government’s shock announcement that night to put the country into Covid-19 Alert Level 4.
That has left many athletes scrambling to find a way to get home.
Southern Powerlifting president Amber Russell said flights booked up quickly, which had left some people stranded.
But if there was a small silver lining, it was that many of the competitors had not planned arriving in Invercargill until later in the week.
‘‘It was one of the biggest nationals we’d ever hosted in the history of New Zealand powerlifting and certainly the biggest competition that I’ve ever organised,’’ Russell said.
‘‘Everything was going so amazingly, you’d expect something to go wrong. But we definitely did not expect it to be that much of a change.’’
They were expecting to go to Level 2 and had started planning how to continue under those restrictions.
But under Level 4, everything is off.
‘‘Luckily, some lifters had not come down yet. But we had a couple that flew in, landed, got the announcement then had to try and figure out what to do.
‘‘Unfortunately, all the flights were taken within about 10 minutes of the announcement.’’
Russell said once the dumbbells were resting in place, administrators would start thinking about an event they could put on to replace the championships.
‘‘It won’t be on this scale again.’’
