As disgruntled residents gear up for a town hall meeting about repairing the West End to Ōtarawairere track, the organiser of the annual race the track is famed for is defending Whakatāne District Council’s cautious approach.

Toi’s Challenge race director William Doney says he is as sad as anyone that the West End section of Ngā Tapuwae o Toi track has been closed for so long.

The 18-kilometre race around Whakatāne’s scenic walkway has become popular with runners from around New Zealand since it began three decades ago. The race has had to be detoured to the Ōhope Road since a slip in 2022 closed the track.

As president of Whakatāne Athletics and Harriers Club, which organises the race, Mr Doney said the club was fully behind plans to have the track reopened.

“I get so many people from all over the country asking me why nothing’s been done.

“It’s been four years since we’ve been able to run the Toi’s Challenge race through there,” he said.

People were less keen to run the event. Besides being less scenic and cutting out the beach section, the new route was also much harder, with a longer distance and more hills to run.

However, as an organiser of the annual race, he also understands the council’s concerns about health and safety.

He said until about 18 years ago, the club had done a lot of work on the track.  

“I’ve been running for this club for 60 years. When I was about 10 years old, we used to carry in steps to the track and never had a problem with it. But back in those days, we never had health and safety and the red tape.”

For that reason, he did not go along to the meeting on December 4 with other supporters of Austin Oliver and Angus Robson’s proposal that the council allow volunteers to carry out work on the track.

“I can understand where the council is coming from.

“We, as the organisers of the event, have to cover ourselves, too. [The council] has been good to us, helping us any way it can for the last four years, and it still supports us.

“Unfortunately, with health and safety, we understand where the red tape is,” he said.

He said the cost of traffic management for the new Toi’s Challenge route across Ōhope Road was around $7000.

At one time, runners used a cattle subway to cross the road but, again, health and safety became an issue.

“It would have had to be cleaned out because of animals going through there.”

Traffic management at the bottom of Gorge Road was a job that club volunteers used to do.

“It’s another thing we used to do ourselves, but we’re not allowed to anymore. As race organisers, anybody who gets hit we are responsible for. And we don’t want to see that happen either.

“It’s sad, really, for organisers. It’s so frustrating, the amount of red tape we go through. A couple of times we even looked at not [holding the race] because of the traffic management cost,” Mr Doney said.

The need to cross the road was also a hazard to people doing Nga Tapuwae o Toi walkway when Toi’s Challenge was not being held as there was no traffic management in place on a stretch of road that was not a pedestrian-friendly place to cross.

A community meeting is being held in the Ōhope Hall on Wednesday at 6pm to discuss the use of volunteers to reopen the walkway.

Organisers of the meeting said it was for anyone disgruntled with the council’s lack of support for volunteers to carry out work to restore the track.

Mayor Nandor Tanczos told them last week the council would decide in the new year about repairing the track.

He said councillors were keen to see the community involved in projects as far as possible.

“It gives people buy-in and allows us to do things more cost effectively. It’s a win-win.”  

When the council decided how to proceed, there would be a public procurement process they could apply to.

“Your application will be looked at equally with everyone else’s,” Mr Tanczos said.

Mr Tanczos said it was not just health and safety compliance of the people carrying out the work.

“The other issue is the ongoing safety of the people using the track because of the slip-prone cliff. We’re getting more and more slips with climate change.

“It’s not just about the legislative requirements. We actually don’t want anyone to get hurt.”