2026 Matariki King & Queen of the Mountain

A quiet Puketāpapa with only a handful of kite-flyers atop, blue skies stretching out over the Wesley neighbourhood and a gentle nor’westerly greeted runners on Matariki afternoon for the 2026 iteration of Owairaka Athletics Club’s King and Queen of the Maunga event. A long-running tradition, this year’s run saw a slightly amended course with the start/end shifting to the Maioro Street end of the Southwestern Path/Cycleway. A 4.55km scramble up and down the maunga for the grown-ups and a 2.5km slingshot from the top of the maunga for the tamariki.

With the trophies carefully located out of the cupboards (notably celebrating 50 and 48 years respectively since their formal instatement) by Kate Doherty and the course carefully inspected by Coach Baz Piotrowski 47 participants, their supporters and guardians as well as all the event volunteers gathered together at the recently refurbished Lovelock track for a race briefing and karakia at 2pm.

Both the tamariki and ‘grown-ups’ races started simultaneously at 2:30pm with a particularly intriguing contest shaping up on paper between Anton Weatherhead and defending King of the Mountain, Jack Snedden. The race was won by Anton Weatherhead in a time of 14m 59s with Jack’s younger sister Isabella Snedden, who races in the U14 grade, crowned the Queen of the Mountain with an impressive time of 17m 32s.

Other notable performances included Elijah McDermott, who was not far behind Anton, posting a time of 16m 10s, Georgina Collinge-Coker with 19m 43s (placing second in the QoTM race), Finn Baxter with 8m 9s and Grace Vashi with 8m 47s (both winning the tamariki races).

Full results

Participants all returned to the club for servings of delicious home-made soup, to witness the prize giving and to catch-up with friends and family. Well done to everyone who ran or walked as well as to the very busy volunteers Kate, Baz, Tony, Sheenal, Rebecca, James F, Syd, Harry Harris, Jojo, Jessabelle, Terence, Annika, Timo, Gayleen, Katrina and Tim Morrison who commandeered registration desks, soup stations, stopwatches, cameras, gates and corners.

Thanks also to Tharindu who stepped up this year as Race Director, and penned this race report.

You can see the rest of Terence & Jo's race photos here.