The challenge of the Tower

Updated 3.15pm: Tauranga airport rescue fire fighters believe stair training at the Tauranga airport control tower will give them an edge when they take on the Auckland Sky Tower Challenge today.


Taking another crack at the tower, Cameron Manderson, Tracey Lemon and Josh Molan. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

In recent months three of the airport fire fighters; Cameron Manderson, Josh Molan and Tracey Lemon, have been running up and down the control tower stairs as part of their training regime for the big day. However, there are only a few steps on the airport control tower compared with the 1,103 steps to the top of the sky tower.

'We worked it out, there's 45 steps and we do them 25 times, which is a little more than the equivalent to the top of the tower,” says Tracey.

She's among the top women competitors. In 2014 Tracey was third fastest open woman in the full 25kg of firefighting kit, wearing and using breathing apparatus.

The three airport rescue fire fighters are joining 850 professional and volunteer firefighters from across the country who will be gathering at the base of the tower today for the ascent.

Firefighters taking part in the challenge have options. There is open, and age group. They all have to wear the air tank, but breathing through the mask is optional because it makes air management much harder.

The Tauranga rescue fire fighters are all using the breathing apparatus. The times they have been posting have all been trending down over recent years, apart from a blip that Cameron ascribes to a Raro trip shortly before lasts year's event.

There are 850 fire fighters struggling to the top of the tower today, happy in the knowledge the fund raising goal of $850,000 has already been surpassed with the total on Friday afternoon at $1.092 million.

The record for climbing the Auckland Sky Tower wearing full kit and using breathing apparatus is a little over eight minutes.

Times for the 2016 run are: Tracey, 13m47seconds, Josh 15m03s, Cameron 17m.58s.

Tracey's time from 2015 is 14 minutes and 39 seconds. Josh has a 14 minutes and 27 second time from 2014 to beat. Cameron's last time was an 18 minutes and 25 seconds.

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