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This year the Sweeney Shield Relay consisted of five teams of 5 runners with the relay legs consisting of distances of 2.7 km to 5.5 km. The 20.6 km course started from the club rooms at Taradale Park, through to Puketapu and back via the Puketitiri Road into Park Island, Greenmeadows and back to the Napier Harrier clubrooms in Taradale.
On the first leg Eric Phimister led the teams in with the fastest time of 19m47s for the 5 km Puketapu Hill lap and handed a 9 second lead to Joan Vyle. Niall McCormack came in second on lap one and handed over to the Max Taylor/ Adam Barron combination. Because of their young age Taylor and Barron shared this leg of the relay and they acquitted themselves well by blitzing the rest and recording a combined time of 11m42s for their 2.7 km lap. The result of this effort put that team 2m11s in front of the field. This lead was not to be contested for the rest of the race.
Michael Lintott was next to be tagged by Barron on the 3rd leg. Lintott, who maintains to have not run for a while, claimed the 3.1 km legs fastest time of 13m54s. Lintott ran well and was not at all put off when he had to set out into a river of on coming Ramblers road cyclists. Behind him, 10 year old Kingston Webb had the second fastest time and was only 20 seconds slower.
On the fourth lap the lead was passed on to Mark Lane who easily continued his teams lead with fastest 4th leg time of 20m5s for his 5.3 km run. Lane changed over at Park Island giving Glen Bullock an easy run home to successfully claim the trophy for his team.
Annie Kane had the fastest last lap of 4.5k to bring her team through from last place to 3rd in 18m29s.
The winning team of McCormack, Taylor, Barron, Lintott, Lane and Bullock recorded a team time of 1hr26m27s for the total journey. This was 2m49s ahead of the 2nd team in and 5m43s ahead of the last team.
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