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The Hawke’s Bay Sports Awards will be relaunched this year following a review that brings a change of venue after 20 years as the anchor event at the Pettigrew Green Arena in Taradale.

Sport Hawke’s Bay chief executive Ryan Hambleton has announced the awards ceremony will be held in Napier’s War Memorial Conference Centre on April 2.

It is proposed to alternate venues between the twin cities, with the 60th anniversary 2026 event expected to be held at the Toitoi Arts and Events Centre in Hastings.

Founded in 1966 as the single presentation of the Hawke’s Bay Sportsman of the Year trophy to amateur golfer Stuart Jones at the offices of the Napier Daily Telegraph newspaper, it grew over the years to incorporate an awards dinner.

A major leap forward came in 2003, when annual awards ceremonies with about 450 present - including prominent New Zealand sports stars as guest speakers - began in the arena, which also became the headquarters of Sport Hawke’s Bay.

Now running as the Forsyth Barr Hawke’s Bay Sport and Recreation Awards, it included .

The awards had 14 categories when last held in 2023, with the supreme award going to rower Emma Twigg for a record fourth time, and second time in a row.

With a review taking place, , and there has been no announcement yet whether names for the previous 12 months will be added to the silverware.

The Hawke’s Bay Secondary School Sports Awards went ahead in October.

Basketball was the big winner (the male and female awards going respectively to national representatives and Napier students Jackson Ball and Graecyn Parahi). The guest speaker was 2016 and 2024 Olympics kayak racer Aimee Fisher, a three-time winner of the supreme honour at the Forsyth Barr awards.

 were held in May.

The premier awards in April will be for achievements between January 1 and December 31, 2024, reverting to the calendar year .

Aimee Fisher with the silverware after being named Hawke's Bay Supreme Sportsperson of the Year for the first time in 2016. She's a top contender to claim the honour this year, for a fourth time. Photo / ¾ÅÒ»ÐÇ¿ÕÎÞÏÞ

Nominations are to be called soon, leading to the selection of finalists across the categories ahead of the announcement of the winners.

More than 20 sports have been recognised with the presentation of the Sportsman of the Year or Supreme awards, with winners having come from golf, rugby, hockey, roller skating, athletics, swimming, rifle shooting, surf lifesaving, softball, rowing, cricket, horse racing, croquet, football, powerlifting, para-sport, ultrasport, , basketball,  and canoeing.

Four achievements on the water at the 2024 Olympic Games in France are likely to figure highly this year, including Twigg’s silver medal in the women’s single sculls, and Peter Cowan’s Paralympics bronze medal in the men’s para canoe VL3 200m final.

Fisher was fourth behind New Zealand golden queen Dame Lisa Carrington in canoeing’s women’s K500 (following a world record time World Cup final win in Hungary in May), and Tom Mackintosh was fifth in the men’s single sculls final.

Runner George (Geordie) Beamish, based in the United States, could also be a contender after a string of successes.

In January he lowered his New Zealand record for the men’s 5000m indoors, two weeks later he set an Oceania record in the indoor two miles, and in March he won the .

In July, he lowered his Oceania record for the 3000m steeplechase, but illness hit his performance at the Olympic Games where he was a highly ranked contender but did not qualify for the final.

Cricket could have two significant teams as title contenders.

The Hawke’s Bay men’s team successfully defended national minor association’s trophy, the Hawke Cup, four times in January-March and start a new season of defences at the end of January.

Indoor side the Turkeys were third in a world tournament in Sri Lanka in April, and in September successfully defended their national men’s indoor title.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 41 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.