With the announcement of a new sporting event in the Great Lakes anticipated in the next few weeks, and preparations in full swing for the Forster Anaconda Adventure Race in August, the situation is looking a lot brighter than back in 2006 when the Ironman Australia Triathlon moved to Port Macquarie.

The race had been held in Fortser for 20 years prior to that.

Dick will be supported in his new role by vice-president John Zeitsch. Between them the pair has approximately 35 years experience in sports event management and promotion in the local area as part of GLITA.

They were elected to their new roles at GLITA’s recent AGM, taking over from Rick Naylor and John Mansour who stepped down from their respective roles as president and vice-president.

As Mr Naylor explains GLITA was originally set up over 20 years ago to hold an ultra-distance triathlon in Forster – the first of its kind in Australia. It was not until later that the event became known as Ironman.

Despite the setback of losing the Ironman to Port Macquaire, GLITA continued working behind the scenes in close collaboration with Great Lakes Tourism to attract further sporting events to the region and last year the inaugural Forster Anaconda Adventure Race was staged.

Not only does the event bring hundreds of competitors and their friends and supporters to town for the weekend, the Adventure race involves less disruption to traffic for example as the course is mostly off-road.

In order to focus on specific events like the adventure race and to target future opportunities GLITA is structured so that various sub-committees can be formed and anybody (even if not a member of GLITA) can be involved.

For example, members have formed the Anaconda Forster Project Team to work in partnership with Great Lakes Tourism and event managers Rapid Ascent to ensure the on-going success of the event.

“We have created an event management model by working closely with partner organisations to create a project team which can be rolled out again for other events should the need arise,” Dick said.

“It is truly an exciting time to be involved in the organisation as we identify and embrace new event opportunities.”