By Tom McCrae
It's hoped a little slice of Whangarei will spur on one of our gold medal hopes, racing tonight in London.
Nectar Café in Northland discovered Mahe Drysdale has a sweet tooth and has been supplying the rower for the last five years, and today the cafe was packed with his supporters - each with their own slice of carrot cake.
Five years ago Drysdale visited the cafe, fell in love with the cake and now gets it sent wherever he competes.
“A little encouragement to say, ‘Good on ya Mahe, we know how hard you're trying we know how rough it is,’” says Debbie Stowe of Nectar Café.
“It certainly gets demolished pretty quickly, [so I] keep it quite quiet when it is coming into town,” says Drysdale.
But word quickly spread through the New Zealand rowing camp in London.
“Every now and then one goes missing in the post, so that is very traumatic but we absolutely love carrot cake, we often have it for lunch, with a dollop of ice cream, we really love it,” says rower Juliette Haigh.
Back in Whangarei and it's not just about sitting back and eating cake - the cafe wants to encourage youngsters to get into rowing.
“I wanted to get the rowing machines in to get people doing the 2000m Olympic distance and see how hard these guys are actually working because they kind of make it look pretty easy on TV,” says Nigel Stowe.
Everyone at the cafe is certain he'll bring home gold, but regardless of the result there'll be a big fat sweet surprise waiting.
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