The best of an exceptional year for the province will contest the top honours at this year’s Otago Sports Awards.
There were certainly some tough decisions for the judging panel to make, and the supreme award has several justifiable contenders.
The unparalleled success Otago athletes delivered at this year’s Winter Olympics has led those sports to feature prominently.
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott was predictably one of three finalists in the sportswoman of the year.
The 21-year-old snowboarder won a gold-silver double in Beijing, in an illustrious 12 months.
She will go up against the two-time defending supreme award winner Courtney Duncan, who won her third consecutive women’s motocross world title last year.
Otago and White Ferns cricket great Suzie Bates rounds out the finalists in a category that would have given the judges plenty of headaches.
Tiarn Collins capped a fine season on the snowboarding slopes with a breakthrough world cup title, Braden Currie won another Coast to Coast and Finn Butcher won silver at the world extreme slalom kayaking championships.
Missing from that list is skier Nico Porteous.
The Winter Olympic gold medallist is still just 20, so falls into the junior sportsman of the year category.
He joins fellow Winter Olympians Gustav Legnavsky and Campbell Wright as a finalist.
Another Olympian features in the junior sportswoman category.
Erika Fairweather’s look of astonishment after her swim to make the 400m freestyle final at last year’s Tokyo Games will be etched into the collective memory.
Her breakout performance at just 17, in which she ended the year ranked fourth in the world in the event, will be hard to topple.
However, world junior freeski slopestyle champion Ruby Andrews and New Zealand handball representative Annalise Wilson will make compelling cases.
The Otago Daily Times-sponsored team of the year category is set to provide one of the intriguing battles of the night.
The Hallyburton Johnstone Shield-winning Otago Sparks, Women’s South Central series champion Southern United team and New Zealand Championship-winning Otago Whalers will contest the award.
Para-athlete/team of the year is loaded with similar quality.
Javelin thrower Holly Robinson and long jumper Anna Grimaldi both won gold medals at their events in Tokyo, while Adam Hall claimed two bronzes at the Winter Paralypmics.
Coach of the year is a shootout between Sean Thompson, Tommy Pyatt and Brent Ward, respective coaches of Sadowski-Synnott, Porteous and Grimaldi.
Martin Toomey (snowsports), James Doleman (rugby) and Chris Gaffaney (cricket) are finalists for official of the year, and awards will be also be presented for services to sport and innovation in sport.
The awards have also introduced emerging talent categories.
Dylan Pledger (rugby and touch), Jacob Cumming (cricket) and James Gardner (cycling) contest the boys category, and Jorja Gibbons (athletics), Pipi Horan (rowing) and Isabel Watterson (skiing) are girls finalists.
Two Wakatipu High School rowing crews and the John McGlashan College curlers are finalists in emerging team of the year.
Judges for the Otago Polytechnic-sponsored awards are Sport Otago chief executive John Brimble, Otago Daily Times sports editor Hayden Meikle, Otago Polytechnic chief executive and athletics coach Megan Gibbons, radio producer Rowena Duncum and former long-serving Sport Otago manager Michael Smith.
The awards will be held tonight at the Otago Polytechnic Hub. Former cricketer Craig Cumming is the host, and the special guest is cycling great Alison Palmer.
