rivettingKateTaylor

After an awesome night last night at Larnach’s Castle…. I have some info for you before tonight’s live televised show!

(taken from YF press release cos I’m too busy going through all my photos…….)

In a change to the Contest this year, all of the Technical and Practical Day Challenge winners were announced at The National Bank Sponsors Dinner. After a traditional Haggis ceremony, host Dougal Stevenson invited Contest Sponsors to come forward and award trophies to the Challenge winners so far.

Tasman’s Michael Lilley took away the Agri-sports, Market Innovation and Strategic Business Challenges. Pete Gardyne was the winner of the Agri-skills and Community Footprint Challenges. The Head to Head was won by Waikato/Bay of Plenty’s Sam Williams, the Human Resources Challenge went to East Coast’s Tony Dowman and Brad Lewis was the winner of the Interview Challenge.

Northern’s Katherine Tucker and Aorangi’s Andrew Scott may not have take out any of the individual Challenges, but speaker and 2011 Contest Champion Will Grayling urged them to not give up. He said “the only section I won last year was the speech challenge and that was only by point three of a point – so it can still be done.”

Mr Grayling also spoke about his year as Contest Champion saying that it has given him the opportunity to rub shoulders with leaders in the agriculture industry and to learn from their experience. He said he was impressed with the way the Grand Finalists had handled themselves so far and wished them luck ahead of the big reveal tonight at the Televised Grand Final Evening Show.