Kiwis vote Dan Carter as Meridian People's Choice

It was the combination of famous good looks and sporting prowess that spurred Kiwis to vote for Dan Carter in the Meridian People’s Choice competition.

Throughout 2011 Meridian Energy asked New Zealanders to nominate who they thought deserved to be named New Zealand’s favourite Rugby Legend – and the votes came in the thousands. Dan Carter took top honours in the competition gaining the most nominations to be named the winner, only narrowly beating out the inspirational Sir Colin Meads and rugby hero and captain Richie McCaw.

On the nomination, Dan Carter said “Thanks so much to all the fans out there who took the time to vote in this competition.

“Getting this sort of recognition is pretty cool when you consider all the great players New Zealand has had.”

To enter the competition people had to nominate someone who inspired them — whether a professional rugby player, a coach or manager, or even the person who first introduced them to rugby. Meridian asked people to tell them why they think their nominee deserved the top slot.

Nominees ranged from New Zealand rugby greats through to hard working volunteers supporting the game at grassroots level.

“It has been a pretty crazy year with lots of ups and downs, but the boys managed to pull the win off and now everyone can head off and take a well deserved break,” says Dan.

Everyone who nominated a rugby legend went into the draw to win a travel package to Queenstown worth up to $10,000, and Tula Williams from Porirua near Wellington was the lucky winner.

“I’m a big fan of rugby and I was speechless when I found out I had won the trip. I’ve never been to Queenstown before so I’m looking forward to having an amazing holiday with my family,” she said.

All entries also went into the draw to win one of two $1000 garden vouchers or one of five $500 credits of electricity from Meridian.

The Meridian People’s Choice NZ Rugby Legend competition was run in conjunction with Meridian’s sponsorship of Living Legends.

Living Legends is a community conservation project that planted around 85,000 native trees and shrubs in 18 locations throughout the country during the rugby festivities. Each planting was dedicated to a rugby legend that has made a significant contribution to rugby in that province.

Full competition results, including the top 20, can be found at meridian.co.nz


About Meridian Energy

Meridian is New Zealand’s largest electricity generator and currently owns and operates seven hydro stations, four wind farms within New Zealand, and one wind farm in Australia:
• Manapouri power station and six hydro stations on the Waitaki River in the South Island
• Te Apiti wind farm near Palmerston North
• White Hill wind farm in Southland
• West Wind farm in Wellington
• Te Uku wind farm in Raglan
• Mt Millar wind farm, Eyre Peninsula, South Australia
• CalRENEW-1 solar farm in Mendota, California

Internationally, Meridian has operations in Sydney Australia and San Francisco, California.
Meridian also retails electricity to around 270,000 individual customer connections (including Powershop) throughout New Zealand, which includes households, farms and businesses. It also provides electricity to New Zealand’s single largest electricity user, the Rio Tinto Alcan New Zealand Limited aluminium smelter in Bluff.

Meridian invests strongly in renewable energy development and has over 1,500 megawatts of Australasian development opportunities in the development pipeline.