In June, we reported that 42 Ryman Healthcare villages in New Zealand and Australia were gearing up to take part in the world’s first international retirement village Olympic Games.
Now the first-ever group of Olympics@Ryman athletes are preparing for a thrilling medal ceremony on Sunday where their winning efforts will be recognised.
Winners in each of the swimming, relay walking, cycling, lawn bowls and quiznastics (gymnastics for the mind) events will line up to receive their gold, silver and bronze medals at a special ceremony being held at Auckland’s Hilton Hotel.
Ryman Healthcare’s inspired idea saw Ryman’s long-established Hilda Ross village take the gold in the world’s first remote lawn bowls game using technology developed by Hamilton-based Aware Group.
Playing on the green at their Hamilton sister village Linda Jones, the Hilda Ross team took on New Plymouth’s Jean Sandel team 951km away at Christchurch’s Diana Isaac green.
Using overhead cameras set up at each green and Microsoft video streaming technology plus a headset that interprets the bowls’ location via GPS, the technicians could accurately place the bowls on the two greens, making it possible for the two teams to play each other.
Another group event was the relay walking where teams of six from 30 Ryman villages completed three lots of laps each at their designated venue to cover a distance of 21.6km. Between laps, the walkers would do a handover of their FitBits and bumbags to the next walker.
William Sanders in Devonport won the gold, followed by Greenlane’s Logan Campbell who secured silver, and Hamilton’s Linda Jones won the bronze.
“I think the secret to our success was that we were all so supportive of each other, both on the day and during practice time, and we accepted that we may not win but it had been fun having a go,” William Sanders’ team captain Glynne Cockerton said.
In the individual swimming and cycling events, residents got the chance to excel at favourite sports.
In the case of Logan Campbell’s Terry Griffiths, a former Auckland representative swimmer, won gold in the men’s swimming with a time of 28:33. The event sparked his return to the pool after years of not swimming.
Terry (pictured right) said: “I’ve been training every second day. I’m actually quite enjoying it, and some of these flappy muscles are going into muscles again!”
Murray Halberg’s Colin Tea won his village their second medal, getting silver, and Jean Sandel’s Murray Boulter took the bronze.
The cycling brought out some more stunners, with Jean Sandel yet again winning a medal, with their publicity-shy resident getting the gold.
The cyclists competed in different locations but could see each other’s avatars on a giant TV screen which projected a virtual reality course in Japan, where the Olympics are being held. A publicity-shy resident from Jean Sandel won gold, Evelyn Page’s John van de Schoor won silver and William Sanders’ Allan Eriksen achieved bronze.
In the women’s final Diana Isaac resident Doreen Watkins took gold. Doreen, a self-confessed fitness fanatic, was chased hard by Sue Greet from Anthony Wilding village. In the end, Doreen took gold in a time of 30min 59sec and Sue silver – just five seconds behind. Charles Fleming’s Norah Fraser took bronze with a time of 34:08.
The last event to take place was the much anticipated Quiznastics, with Ryman Healthcare CEO Gordon MacLeod acting as quizmaster and using Murray Halberg village as base.
Each of the 37 villages taking part tuned in from their respective village centres for a mental workout testing their knowledge of past and present Olympic Games.
Whangarei village Jane Mander was crowned gold medal winners with Wellington’s Malvina Major winning silver and Kiri Te Kanawa in Gisborne getting bronze after two tiebreaker questions with Nelson’s Ernest Rutherford.
“It is great to see how our residents have embraced the event – the competition has been ferocious. We’ve learned a lot about technology and where it can take us and we’ve had a bundle of fun along the way,” said Mr McLeod.
