Omicron's spread sees events go on under tighter restrictions

While many events are being cancelled due to tougher restrictions during the Omicron outbreak, some organisers are getting creative to keep events running in a different form.

Wellington Cup Day was held as a downscaled event for the first time on Saturday.

General admission was closed this year and a craft beer village and the annual fashion competition were cancelled.

Nearly 1800 industry and corporate guests spent the day in 18 separate spaces treated as individual venues with a maximum of 100 people in each area.

The event usually attracts up to 15000 visitors.

The racing industry’s put further restrictions on jockeys during the Omicron outbreak including no interisland travel for competitors and jockeys being rapid antigen tested on the day of the race.

‘Lincoln King’ with jockey Craig Grylls won the Wellington Cup.

The Eastern Regional Championships, Surf Life Saving’s second biggest annual competition for athletes, was meant to be held today before the country moved to the red setting.

Instead, local clubs held training days for athletes from around the country separated by age groups, with under 100 people in each area.

“We knew there’d be a lot of athletes turning up to the Mount anyway, it’s a holiday weekend and it’s a part of the calendar so there was going to be a lot of clubs turning up here," Mount Maunganui Lifeguard service chair Jamie Troughton said.

“What we wanted to do was just formalise things so they weren’t turning up and training ad hoc with no limitations."

The day was a chance for lifeguards to focus on emergency responses.

“It’s been a really tricky year for lifeguards because it has been so busy on our beaches, people have wanted to get out and about, the waters been amazing, the weather’s been amazing; we're really conscious that our lifeguards need to be out there keeping those training regimes high so that they're able to respond best when they're faced with an emergency,” Troughton said.