Wellington, March 20 NZPA - A 13-year-old will be winging to the United States after winning the New Zealand Spelling Bee competition today.

Tom Winter, from Christchurch's Burnside High School, will represent New Zealand in the Olympics of spelling, the 83rd Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC, in June.

Tom survived a harrowing 90 minutes that saw 11 of his fellow contestants eliminated. He was pronounced the winner after spelling dissonant correctly.

"It took 17 gruelling rounds to find our winner," event's manager Janet Lucas said.

"The tension was high but our spellers had nerves of steel and hung in word after word."

The runner up was Hamilton student Celine Kao from Sacred Heart College. Celine tripped over the word, "circuitous". Liam Davis from Liston College in Auckland came third after misspelling the word "recidivist".

Twelve finalists from around the country travelled to Wellington to compete this afternoon in the national final after winning a place in one of five regional competitions.

Tom said: "I wasn't sure how well I'd do. I was really nervous, but now I'm really happy with my win and it's a relief it's over."

He said he was thrilled about the prospect of representing New Zealand at the US Final.

"It's pretty nerve wracking but exciting at the same time."

Tom will spend the next two months studying the Scripps National Spelling Bee word list and reading Webster's Third New International Dictionary, a five kilogram monster with 470,000 words. He will also try to master the differences in American and English spelling.

The winner of the 2010 final is this country's sixth representative at the US Spelling Bee, the world's longest running academic competition and held more times than the Academy Awards. In America it attracts more than nine million competitors hopeful of winning a place in the championship final.