ASB Sports Centre Opens Outdoor Track

NEWS RELEASE
18 February 2013

ASB Sports Centre Opens Outdoor Track

The action at Wellington’s ASB Sports Centre in Kilbirnie moves outdoors on Wednesday 20 February with the opening of a community running track around the outside of the building.

The track will be opened by Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown at 10.30am with the help of some leading Wellington sports figures. Champion long-distance and mountain runner Melissa Moon will be MC and a celebrity race around the track will include Silver Ferns Te Huinga Reo Selby-Rickit and Katrina Grant, with players from the Wellington Saints basketball team and Pulse netball team.

Students from Evans Bay Intermediate will have a chance to try out the track and Wellingtonians are invited to come along and set their own personal best records. The time trials will be held from 11–11.30am. All participants will have the opportunity to win a gym membership.

“The $123,000 track has been paid for by ASB as part of its sponsorship agreement for the indoor sports centre. It is a community asset that we hope will encourage people to get active. This includes everything from buggy walking to jogging to getting fit for sport,” says Mayor Wade-Brown.

“The track will be a great complement to the newly improved track at Newtown Park, and it would be good to see family members using it while their parents, children or siblings are inside using the ASB Sports Centre,” she says.

Sports and Events Portfolio Leader Councillor John Morrison says the ASB Sports Centre is fast becoming the heart of community sport in Wellington with more than 40 schools participating in a range of sports. “These children are developing great habits for sport and exercise that will benefit them over a lifetime. The new running track is one more way we can encourage the whole community to become more active, more often,” he says.

Linley Wood, ASB Executive General Manger for Culture and Community, says the outdoor running track is an exciting addition to the ASB Sports Centre. “We are pleased to be working with Wellington City Council to continue to provide new ways to encourage sport and activity throughout the community.”

The 400m two-lane track is marked out at 100m intervals and has a start/finish at the southern end. It has plenty of bounce, constructed of two layers of polyurethane with rubber granules embedded in the surface.

Wellington City Council news releases are also available daily as Web Alerts through the Council's website, www.Wellington.govt.nz. To subscribe, select the Web Alerts icon on the home page.

ENDS

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