Recreation & Sport

International yachting teams have raced to submit entries for the new Louis Vuitton Pacific Series to be sailed in Auckland – New Zealand’s ‘city of sails’ – in February 2009.

Move over bungy, a local volunteer group from the Manawatu town of Foxton, in the lower North Island, wants to introduce New Zealand’s latest extreme sporting thrill – a spin on the blades of the town’s landmark windmill.

Kiwi skateboarder Rob Thomson has completed an epic solo skateboard journey through three continents that began in Switzerland and finished in Shanghai.

In another Mount Everest first, New Zealand skydiver Wendy Smith was one of three dare-devil skydivers to make the first ever solo parachute jump over the world’s highest peak.

An Air New Zealand pilot has taken the kiwi ‘can-do’ reputation to extremes by spending four hours dangling 20 metres above a busy London street.

New Zealand has made another leap into the record books by becoming the first country in the world to create a new skydiving qualification for tandem jumps.

Cape Kidnappers golf course on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island has been rated as the best in the world by Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

New Zealand has been given the thumbs up by British migrants as the best place in the world to live.

New Zealand’s Olympic rowing golden girls, the Evers-Swindell twins – Caroline and Georgina - celebrated their 30th birthday by announcing their retirement.

New Zealand has strengthened its reputation as a wine growing, seafaring nation with an annual event that could become the Kiwi version of the beaujolais nouveau race.