Surprise Fiji At

Boost For Games Hopes

New Caledonians Surprise Fiji At Swimming, Tennis

Two teams of athletes from New Caledonia who visited Fiji in August and September have shown that Fiji is not likely to get away with as many gold medals in the Second South Pacific Games at Noumea next year as they got at the First Games in Suva two years ago.

THE first team, swimmers, visited Fiji under the auspices of the Ligue Caledonniene de Natation.

Out of 17 races against a Suva team, the New Caledonians won 12, and their girls broke two Fiji records and equalled another.

Next day, the New Caledonians won eight out of 12 events against a Lautoka team.

This was a big change from the 1963 Games when Fiji won 14 out af the 15 events—the only one that hey didn’t win being a butterfly *ace, in which they didn’t compete.

In Suva, Christine Legras, of Noumea, beat the Fiji girls’ 440 freestyle record with a time af 6 min. 0.6 sec.; and Marie-Anne Nicollet equalled the 1 min, 39.6 sec. •ecord for the girls’ 110 yards areastroke.

In the medley relay, Noumea’s Maud Monvoison, Margaret Madeo, Marie-Anne Nicollet and Christine clipped 1.5 sec. off the Suva Swimming Club’s record. Christine ilso broke the record for the 220 rards freestyle which was won by ecord breaker Olive Pickering, of Suva, who is only 10 years old.

Fiji could perhaps draw some consolation from the fact that no 3ames records were broken, and that lardly anybody in the home teams lad done any real training.

But round about the time that he New Caledonians were creating lavoc among them, another New Caledonian swimming star, 16-year >ld Miss Simone Hanner, was dis inguishing herself in France.

Simone, who returned to Noumea rom France in mid-September after . month’s special swimming training, >ecame champion of France in the 100 metres freestyle cadet section luring her stay. Her time was 2 min. 3.5 sec.

The second sports surprise for the ujians at the hands of the New Caledonians was in lawn tennis.

In the Fiji Open Championship, in Lautoka, the New Caledonians won two of the four sections—the men’s and women’s singles.

Guy Pesnel won the men’s singles. 6-1, 6-2 from Fiji’s B. K. Reddy; and Anne-Marie Mouralt won the women’s singles from Mrs. A.

Duberal of Fiji, 6-1, 6-1.

Fiji was superior in the men’s doubles, showing as it did in the first Games in 1963 that it was better in team work. R. Duberal and his

partner, S. I. Taylor, defeated J.

Carnivelli and G. Berge, of Noumea, by sets of 6-3, 6-3. In the women’s doubles, Mrs. Duberal and Dr. A.

Low, after losing the first set badly by 2-6, recovered to give Mrs. L.

Porcheron, and Mrs. Mouralt a sound defeat with a score of 2-6, 7-5, 6-0.

The mixed doubles, held in Suva, was an all-Fijian final, but not before the New Caledonians had made the Fiji players work hard in earlier games.