With 5 weeks to go until the planned date for New Zealand’s largest cycling event, (traditionally held on the last Saturday in November), and after much deliberation and consultation with riders, stakeholders, event partners and others, we have made the decision to postpone this year’s BDO Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge and move the 44th running of the event to its reserve date of 19 February 2022.
Around 5,000 riders, 7,500 supporters and spectators, along with over 800 personnel and volunteers are in attendance each year. With this in mind, the decision has been reached with everyone’s health and well-being at the forefront, along with the current uncertainty around the ability to host large scale events and engage in nationwide travel in the immediate future.
We have not reached our decision to postpone the event lightly. However, after much careful consideration, we have concluded that hosting a February event is in the best interests of our cycling community given the challenging and uncertain environment facing the event industry in the near term. It also provides everyone with some certainty and clarity to be able to re-arrange accommodation and travel plans, revise training regimes and to be ready to ride again this summer.
We also believe that by moving the date out by three months, we should all have more certainty in relation to COVID-19 with respect to gathering sizes, alert levels, border restrictions and vaccinations, and what they mean in order to be able to run and deliver a large scale event of our nature.
We totally understand that the change of date may not be ideal for some people’s own personal circumstances. For all those already entered, you are automatically transferred to the 19 February 2022 date. The event is owned by a charitable trust, and we are committed to honouring our commitments to the community we support. Given the significant non-recoupable costs that the event has incurred over the past 18 months, no refunds or transfers to future event dates are available, however, if you are unable to make the postponement date, you will be able to transfer your entry to another rider at no charge right up until 31 January 2022.
And for anyone not already entered, we’d love to have your support to help keep both us and the events industry alive and kicking by making the commitment to enter one of our many event categories on offer and help celebrate this special occasion on the events calendar in February.
Check out everything on offer and enter on the BDO Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge website.
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