Grant lifts top sports award for third time
BY DAVID DAWKINS
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Rower Duncan Grant became just the second individual to be named Marlborough's Sportsperson of the Year three times when he was recognised as 2009's top sporting achiever last night.
The world champion Wairau lightweight single sculler headed off a quality field, featuring 36 of Marlborough's best sporting talents, to take the top award at The Marlborough Express Blenheim Round Table Sportsperson of the Year awards dinner at Marlborough Lines Stadium.
Grant also won in 2006 and 2007 and joins All Black Alan Sutherland (1967, 1968 and 1970) as the only other three-time winner.
In front of a sold-out audience of 360, Grant was joined in the winners' circle by under-19 world champion track cyclist Cameron Karwowski, the Blenheim Round Table Most Promising Under-21 Sportsperson of the Year, and Marlborough Basketball's Jacqueline Taylor, the Sport Marlborough Sports Administrator of the Year.
However, on a night where world champion single sculler and Olympic bronze medallist Mahe Drysdale gave the crowd an honest and straightforward account of his journey from overweight office worker to world champion rower as the Air New Zealand guest speaker, it was only fitting that rowing again took home the major honour.
It was the fourth straight year rowing has provided Marlborough's Sportsperson of the Year. Picton's Joseph Sullivan was last year's winner.
Once described as the forgotten man of New Zealand rowing, Grant has established himself as one of the sport's most consistent performers, winning his third straight world single sculls title in Poznan, Poland, in August.
The achievement saw him join Rob Waddell, Mahe Drysdale and the Evers-Swindell sisters as the only Kiwis to accomplish the feat.
Grant said he was thrilled to win the award and enjoyed the chance to be in the spotlight.
"Obviously guys like Mahe get most of the limelight and that's understandable ... I'm happy if I'm going out, rowing well and getting the win. Awards like this definitely are a nice topping on the year."
- © Fairfax NZ News
