It was news we didn’t want to come out of the Ruapehu Motorcycle Club, but it came nonetheless: the 2021 Cold Kiwi Motorcycle Rally has been cancelled.
The news came after the NZ government announced further extensions to the lockdowns currently experienced by Auckland and much of the Waikato amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
With large gathering, like the 2021 Cold Kiwi, only able to occur under level 1 Covid-19 alert level conditions, the extensions of level 2 and level 3 announced on October 18th were the final nail in the coffin for the event.
“Sadly The Ruapehu Motorcycle Club would like to inform you that the 2021 Cold Kiwi Rally is CANCELLED”, posted Jeanette Weedon to the official Cold Kiwi Facebook page.
“As most of you would know, this decision was a hard but inevitable given the fact that the spread of Covid cases has not ceased and we require level 1 to hold this rally.
We had hoped for a better outcome but obviously this is completely out of our hands.
We are now looking forward to next year's rally with details to be released in due course, once we have set guidelines in place and have all information regarding what will be expected of us as a club and of you, our rally attendees.”
The 2021 Cold Kiwi had already been postponed from its traditional Father’s Day weekend to November, however further postponement wasn’t an option due to availability of the site to host the rally.
It‘s incredibly disappointing to see the Cold Kiwi cancelled for the second year running. As the t-shirt now says, “Covid stole the Kiwi.”