Hokitika Cycling Club

Further to the earlier post on the AGM, this one is to say thanks to the outgoing committee members, welcome to the incoming committee members and welcome back to the returning committee members.

Nga mihi nui, thanks and see you on the start line to outgoing committee members;

Gemma Hunt (Secretary)
Sharlotte Lucas
Stu Paul
Chrissy Doonan

Nau mai, Haere mai and welcome to the fresh faces of 2026/27;

Briana Rae (Secretary)
Andrew Lyes
Nicole Dalley
Jack Dalley
Matt Johnstone
Jono Dobbs

And noting the continued service of returning members;

Ashley Cassin (President)
Andrew Wiffen (Vice President)
Kirk Tindale (Treasurer)
Graham Provis (Club Captain)
Matt Kelly
Michael Lilley
Dave Smith
Paul Magner

Below is the Club Presidents Report presented at the AGM last night.

Ashley Cassin will stay on as President for the upcoming 2026/27 season, a further post will come out welcoming our incoming and thanking outgoing committee members following last nights election of officers at the AGM.

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It’s hard to believe we are already knocking on the door of season 2026/27

To review the 2025/26 season, where does one start?

The health of our club? The growth of our club and our sport locally? The culture within our club? the people that enable our club? The financial position of our club? The success of our athletes at their various levels of the sport?

All things that a president, committee and club member should be proud of, and this one certainly is.

Season 2025/26 saw 29 races delivered on 11 unique course between Hari Hari and Denniston, utilising in excess of 230km of West Coast roads

Growth in membership and attendance last season was immense, we had 3 Tuesday nights where attendance records were broken and re set. Culminating in a 76 rider record! We averaged a number that quite simply used to be a dream for a record turnout, 53, and enjoyed the company of 134 unique riders. And we have a fleet of a dozen club bikes available to support new riders into our sport.

We are small but we have a significant bank balance, feed by strong and growing membership, race fee and sponsors annual input which continues to grow our funds year on year, even with some serious and strategic purchases over the past few seasons

We have a happy and inclusive place people enjoy coming along to and returning too, but also one people willingly bring others into

Success is an individual thing, Riders starting in the sport, members achieving goals locally, nationally and internationally, and celebrating that success week in week out, but also with 30 awards at prize giving. Our clubs success is Headlined by our very own superstar Sharlotte Lucas, who last season took the win at the cyclocross nationals, was second at the crit nationals and made the winning split at the elite road nationals and earned herself a place at the gravel world champs.

All of these points lend themselves to support the health of our cool little club, in my biased eyes anyway.

And for the above I want to thank those that have enabled this situation to manifest over the previous years and seasons of commitment and hard work, you should be proud of what has been achieved here. But we certainly aren’t stopping here.

We had two SGMs last season, resulting in a fresh, fit for purpose and compliant constitution, and the other resulting in our newest life member being crowned, again thanks to Kirk for driving the constitutional update and congratulations to John for his life membership.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the vast range of supporters our club has, the local papers for week in week out sharing our stories with our community, sponsors that reach out to us to come on board or continue to support us year after year, what a privileged position to be in, to our roading control authorities up and down the coast that we work with, thanks again for your part in our sport and for moving into the risk based approach to traffic management in the way in which you have, coast to coast our largest annual fundraiser and quiet possibly the largest participation event of our club members.

To those on our committee and those that operate outside of our club committee but carry out significant roles and give significant time thanks again, the previously mentioned success doesn’t happen by chance or without significant input. This year a focus needs to be upon building some more capability and redundancy into our system to support the sharing of the week in week out load upon those key contributors to our club.

Following the election of officers and other formalities at tonight’s AGM the committees focus will move quickly to refining the race calendar ahead of the typical day light savings start to Tuesday night racing.

As the days get longer, the cycling season gets closer, so Here is cheers to yet another successful and enjoyable cycle season ahead.

Ash
HCC President 2025-26

A massive congratulations to our riders that took to the start line for the first Canterbury Tour over the weekend, Gemma, Darren, Martin and Andy, plus our de facto club member Noah!

An even bigger congratulations to Martin on taking both 2nd in the General Classification and 1st in the Points Category for his grade, and to Andy on taking 2nd on the GC in his grade.

I’m sure the club will have more members lining up for year two.

Well done team and great to see the season fitness being used still and not lost like some of us might be doing now!

Afternoon all, here’s our season end prize giving night report from this afternoon’s Greymouth Star. Same article was in this morning’s Hokitika Guardian. A nice wrap up of a fantastic club season! Enjoy

Part 2 of 3 for the prize giving and end of season update

We all know that cycling is a sport where numbers matter, however this post has nothing to do with FTP, V02 Max, Heart Rate, cadence, power, speed or training scores and recovery time, but has everything to do with this cool little clubs numbers for the season that was.

The Hokitika Cycling Club brought its 2025/26 season to a close on Tuesday evening, but not before delivering some seriously impressive results.

What started in September and ended in April has been a long season, with plenty of time given by volunteers.

2️⃣9️⃣ - We delivered 29 races this season and two club driven bunch rides

8️⃣ - We raced on eight different Tuesday night courses, on 132km of West Coast road between Nelson Creek and Hari Hari

3️⃣ - We raced on three weekend courses on 117km of West Coast road from Denniston to Hokitika

🥇x3️⃣- We re broke Tuesday turnout records three times this season, with a 76 rider recorded at club champs being the best in club history by some margin

5️⃣3️⃣ - We had an average of 53 riders on Tuesday nights

1️⃣3️⃣4️⃣ - We had 134 unique racers racing this season

3️⃣0️⃣ - We presented 30 awards at prizegiving

1️⃣ - There is only one John Strange! And he is now our newest life member

Lots - Lots of success for our members in races around the country and even overseas. Headlined by our superstar Sharlotte Lucas, who won yet another Le Race recently, this season she took the 🥇 at the cyclocross nationals, was 🥈 at the crit nationals and made the winning split at the elite road nationals which arguably was the strongest bunch of female cyclists fighting it out on New Zealand roads in the history of the sport. She also took an incredible win in Australia and in doing so earned herself a place at the gravel world champs.

And we will do it all again for season 2026/27.

Cheers 🍻
Ash

Evening team,

Last night we celebrated the success of our season at the annual prizegiving. Thanks to those that attended and sorry to those that missed it.

In a picture below is the list of all of the winners of the various awards, along with the group shot of all the winners from the night with their awards (some won multiple awards and some were absent), and some pictures of a few awards being handed over.

This will be the first of three posts this week reflecting on last night, the other two will summarise the season as per my presidents report at the start and the other will be dedicated to our newest life member John Strange, what an honour it was to bestow that upon a stalwart of our club.

Congratulations to our winners, thanks to our members, volunteers, sponsors and committee for your roles in delivering one hellova season for our cool little club.

Cheers,
Ash

Reminder - Season End Prize Giving is tonight (Tuesday).
Location: Pioneer Hotel, Hokitika.

- Gather from 6pm.
- Prize giving will start at 6.30pm.
- Food platters will be coming out from around 7.00pm.
- And there's a drink for all members.

Prize giving includes Most Improved Junior and Senior, Most Honest Rider, and Most Helpful, as voted by members. And of course, Wheel Sucker!
Here's the shortlist of this season's Most Improved awards:
Most Improved Junior:
- Lincoln Martin
- Jack Dalley
- Rhys Groot
Most Improved Senior:
- Martin Ryder
- Warwick Martin
- Allan Bruhn
- Ben Aynsley

Friends and family most welcome and would be great to have them along. We have an awesome season to celebrate!
https://www.facebook.com/events/2824860494571978

And if you still have a timing chip, please bring it along as we are gathering them all in. Thanks.

See you all tonight.