It’s the final big race of the motorcycling calendar, but due to uncertainty caused by Covid-19, the 2021 running of the Whanganui Boxing Day Street Races have been cancelled.
News broke mere weeks away from the event‘s scheduled running at the iconic Cemetery Circuit on the streets of Whanganui, after the debut of the new “traffic light” system designed to curtail the spread of Covid-19 saw Whanganui placed in the most restrictive Red setting. Under the Red setting, events are limited to a maximum of 100 people in a defined space with vaccine passports in use.
The cancellation of the Boxing Day races means the entirety of the 2021 Suzuki International Series (formerly the Tri Series) has now been canned after the earlier announcement that the first two rounds at Manfeild and Taupo were also cancelled.
“It is with huge disappointment, utter frustration and angst that we are forced to announce the cancellation of the final round of the 2021 Suzuki International Series,” organisers posted to the Cemetery Circuit Facebook page.
“This follows on from the forced cancellations of the first two rounds of the series.
This latest cancellation is due to the Whanganui region being placed in the red traffic light, for which we can only assume is a result of lower vaccination rates.
This decision that we have had to make hurts to our hearts and souls, but we cannot go on with constantly moving goal posts [and] that we have been doing everything we can to align with for the past few months. We have tried everything we possibly could to run these events.
To all our long term sponsors including Suzuki New Zealand, all our supporters including Whanganui & Partners and the many other businesses who every year offer their support and assistance, to the volunteers, the riders and spectators, we are truly sorry and deeply disappointed.”