Wheelchair Race

Posted: 28th January 2011

Wheelchair Race Australia Day 2011 – run by Wheelchair Sports NSW

The Australia Day wheel chair race was held on Wednesday 26 January 2011 and the Club again provided 18 volunteer course marshals including 2 sector leaders, Peter Welch and David Scarlett. Our team met at 6.45am to prepare and set up our two sectors at Circular Quay and adjacent George Street. We placed road markers along the middle of the road and taped off each side of the road .The course is cleared of rubbish and dangerous objects such as nails, glass, screws and bolts. Denzil Byrne and Kerry Blight both collected a handful of various metal objects but Denzil won the prize by finding a large lady’s bobby pin. During the race we man the crossings to help with crowd control, answering the public’s questions about the race and general management.

Race participant numbers were down to 28 this year due to an international meeting in New Zealand. The race winner in the open division, Kurt Fearnley, flew back from NZ for the day to compete. He did not take the lead until the last lap and won by at least 60 metres. After the race we dismantled the course stacked up all the witches’ caps and were finished by 10.00am.

Special thanks to our Team members on the day who were DAVID SCARLETT, MATTHEW PAYNE, KAROL BINKOWSKI, DENZIL BYRNE, ROBERT LEE, EVA GERBER, JOHN McKERNAN, ALISTAIR GRAY, BILL LITTLE, BRUCE HILL, ALEX ALLWOOD, RUTH THOMPSON, DEBORAH HOMEWOOD, KERRY BLIGHT and PETER WELCH. Our special thanks must go to partners of Coves who also acted as marshals namely SAM GERBER, DAVID THOMPSON and RHONDA LITTLE.

Peter Welch