Leaning heaving on their values of looking after the environment and heeding the advice to ‘shop local’ race organisers Trojan Holdings teamed up with world renowned design company, Design Box, a family operated company based in Christchurch, to produce the participants medals and category trophies. 

However, what makes these medals extra special is the pendants have all followed the same path as the competitors will, washing out of the Southern Alps before ending up on the shoreline of Canterbury’s beaches before being individually collected and processed by the team at Design Box. 

“When we were approached by Glen (Currie) the Race Director, we knew straight away this was something we’d like to be involved with. It’s such an iconic event,” said David Harré, Design Box principal. 

“As we started to unpick and discuss the journey of the competitors, the time and care the event takes around sustainability and their Leave no Trace principles, we came quite quickly to sourcing the raw materials such as the stone from the beaches here in Canterbury and the Rimu for the trophies from the bush on the West Coast.” 

“Being able to have a pendant like this, that really represents not only the story of the Kathmandu Coast to Coast but also our values of taking care of the environment, will be a very cool memento for the competitors,” said Race Director Glen Currie. 

“The values we hold dear to us as an organisation have allowed us to become the oldest multisport event in the country and for us to be able to share those in a tangible way with the competitors is something that we find special. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about how special we think these finishers medals will be,” Currie added.

“Those same values are held by Kathmandu and many of our other partners too, it really is part of the culture of the event.”

 “Whether it’s training or competing, you’re out there creating memories, and I think when you’re sitting at home in a few years’ time and you hold the pendant it’ll make all those special memories come flooding back which will be pretty cool too.”

The competitors medals had previously been manufactured offshore, however with the advent of Covid 19 putting a strain on a number of kiwi businesses race organisers made a conscious decision to shift their spending to a local organisation.

 “We try to support local organisations as much as possible in everything we do, and this was actually one area where we’d previously been unable to find a suitable outcome locally. But we really took it upon ourselves to make every adjustment to our business that we could and connecting with David was a dream outcome.”