Fiji Outshines Rivals At

Walkover Unlikely To Be Repeated

First South Pacific Games

By capturing 34 of the 59 gold medals competed for at the First South Pacific Games, the British Crown Colony of Fiji showed such an overwhelming superiority in sport that she must be considered the main challenger in the Games series for many years to come.

i LTHOUGH other Territories, not- X ably Tonga and the Cooks, :hieved better results in some sports i proportion to their population nd the size of their teams, Fiji lowed it was easily the most effi :ent all-rounder in South Seas >ort.

In some sports, particularly field /ents and swimming, it performed rilliantly, but in no sports did it ;rform poorly. This is a strength hich other territories will have to tack systematically if they are to rest supremacy from the Colony.

The change in the rules to allow am games to be played under a lints system in Noumea will help rritories in their attack on Fiji‘s ipremacy.

Also, with the experience of the •st Games under their belt, there no doubt that the territories will : more anxious to give Fiji a run r its money in 1966 by selecting e best players available.

Many territories at Suva did not :ld their best. Some of the best ew Guinea and French Polynesian nnis players did not attend for Tsonal reasons. The GEIC tennis am arrived with no women at all id had to borrow some women dng locally to make up a team.

New Caledonian boxers, reputedly •qd, did not enter because of affi ition problems.

Natural Players

Many fine natural players in sev al sports saw for themselves the vantage the big territories had ined by having training facilities, d this is a lesson they took home th them.

New Caledonia’s swimming re- Its, for example, were excellent nsidering that the only pool at aumea is a makeshift one espe illy made for Games training. New dedonian officials are now deter ;ned to get some money spent on lining pools, and New Guinea immers, who also lacked compe

tition experience, learned the same lesson.

The Games have stirred up such enthusiasm in all sports that Fiji will never again have such a walk over.

The Games showed that French Polynesia and New Caledonia gen erally excelled in all ball games, that the Polynesian territories could be expected to make a real showing in the boxing ring, and that Fiji and New Guinea were the main con testants on the athletic field.

Among the many unlucky terri tories at the Games was Tonga, which was awarded the bronze medal for table tennis after the GEIC team did not show up, but lost it again after it offered to play for it.

The chairman of the technical committee, Mr. C. McCubbery, of P-NG, later described Tonga’s action as “one of the finest examples of sportsmanship” he had seen in “long experience with international sport”.

FIRST SHOT: The honour of opening the First South Pacific Games went to Cook Islands tennis player Mrs, Mono Tani (left), of Rarotonga. Soon after 9 a.m. on August 29—six hours before the Games were officially opened by the Governor of Fiji —Mrs. Tani served to Sister M. Lam (right), of Western Samoa, in the first heat of the women's singles at Albert Park. Mrs. Tani won 7-5, 7-9, 6-3. "I wasn't nervous when I started off, although I knew this was really the opening stroke in any sport in the Games," she said afterwards. "I felt very lucky that I had the draw." Only about 300 people saw the opening shot, compared with about 8,000 at the official opening at Buckhurst Park in the after noon.—Photo: Stinsons.