Getting Ready For
pp. 28-29 · Read in the full issue
The Tahiti Games
Fiji is aiming to send a team of 179 to Tahiti, including managers and coaches. For this, organisers will have to raise $46,000. The largest single group will be the athletes —33 of them, men and women.
Archery will have 10 representatives; basketball, 28; boxing, 13; golf, eight; judo, six; skindiving, three; soccer, 20; softball, 14; swimming, 10; lawn tennis, seven; table tennis, 10; volleyball, nine; weightlifting, eight; yachting, four. There will be two over-all team managers.
The cost of sending each competitor will be $256, including $173 for travel and $49 for accommodation Manager of the Fiji team, Mr.
Derek Robinson, who is also chairman of the fund-raising committee, considers since this is the first full dominion team to compete overseas and Fiji is the second biggest country in the Games, it would be “unthinkable for Fiji not to send the strongest possible team”.
The drive for funds has already started. One of the first big projects is the “spot the ball” contest in the Fiji Times from April 1. In 1969, this kind of competition raised $6,000.
Approaches have been made to clubs and firms with the idea that each
should adopt an athlete—that is, raise enough money to send one com petitor.
Fiji’s wonder boy Saimoni Tamani, currently studying and running at Brigham Young University, US, was robbed from gaining a world record for the 440 yards indoor event on boards recently. At a Houston National Federation meeting he returned a time of 475, after being boxed in by other runners, and came jecond .TTie world record is 46.2 s £ IJI s t 1 of * he yards with a time 2m. 11.45.
Fiji won’t have what would have been one certain swimming gold medalist for the Fourth South Pacific Games at Papeete later this year—l year-old Shane Gould, who learned to swim in Nadi Bay. Shane is the daughter of Ron and Shirley Gou d who spent seven years at Nadi, where R° n was manager f° r Pan Am.
Shane first showed promise as a swimmer, when three months old, in a small plastic foam tyre. She first became competent without support
when she was three. Ron had a boat and whenever he was out in Nadi Bay, Shane would tag along. She would also go to Nawaka Village, near Nadi, to swim with Fijian friends.
She did her first competitive swim ming in the pool at Nadi Airport; when the Gould family left Fiji in 1968 to return to Australia, Shane was junior champion at Nadi Air port.
Now a pupil of Turramurra High School, Sydney, she has really gone into the top class as a swimmer and is Australian champion for 100, 200 and 400 metres freestyle and 200 metres medley. She holds the Aus tralian record for all those events except the 100 metres freestyle, and in the 100 metres Dawn Fraser is the only one with a better time.
This year she is the only girl in the top 10 swimmers for all events on a world classification basis. Her best time of 2 m. 7.8 sec. for the 200 metres freestyle is only .9 sec. outside the world record set at the 1968 Olympic Games by Debbie Cole.
Ahead of Shane this year is a tour of Europe, the UK and Japan in an Australian team, and almost certain selection in the Australian team for the 1972 Olympics at Munich.
Shane just misses out on being a Kai Viti. Her parents were in Fiji in 1956 on a three months’ tour of duty. Before the tour ended Mrs.
Gould returned to Australia for con finement because of possible compli cations and Shane was born eight days later.
Western Samoa is to send nine boxers to the Games, ranging from bantam to heavyweight. And judging from their form, it looks as though Samoa will do even better in boxing at Papeete than in the previous two Games, where nine boxers took five golds and four silvers—every boxer making the finals.
Two boxers who took golds at the last Games have since reached greater heights. Moli Afakasi went on to become New Zealand champion and represented NZ in the British Commonwealth Games last year. And Laavasa Sagaga turned professional and so far is the uncrowned middle weight champion of the South Pacific.
Meanwhile, Tongan heavyweight silver medalist at Port Moresby, Fonomanu Sekona. turned profes
Arms wideflung, Tahiti's 15-year-old Danielle Guyonnet just edges Fiji's Anaseini Tabuto (right) and Livia Tui gunu (left) in the women's 100 metres. It was one of the closest finishes in the athletics contest, see story opposite page.— Photo: Bal Ram.
sional recently. He was Tonga amateur champion.
A team of six boxers and a manager from the BSIP were to visit the New Hebrides during Easter weekend to warm up for the Games.
The visit is the result of an invitation from the New Hebrides BA to pay their fares.
However, the BSIP has announced that it will not send a soccer team to Papeete because of a shortage of money. The decision by the Solomons ASA was a blow, as it was generally thought that the team would have a chance of a medal. It would cost $14,000 to send a team.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands ASA has announced it will send 10 athletes and tennis players to represent the colony in Papeete. Trials have begun to find the sportsmen, with the fol lowing time standards set: 100 m, 11.35; 200 m, 235; 400 m, 545; 800 m, 2m. ss; 1,500 m, 4m. 20s; 5,000 m, 17m; 10,000 m, 35m; marathon (26i miles), 3hrs. 30m; high jump, 6ft; long jump, 22ft; triple jump, 43ft; discus, 130 ft; shot put (16 lb), 45ft.
The ASA stipulated that athletes setting the times would have to be watched by responsible sporting bodies, hence athletes on outer islands wishing to test themselves, would have to travel to Tarawa.
Tennis players and athletes will be able to build up for the Games with a May return meeting in Nauru and the colony national championships in July.
So far Ten Tara is the only GEIC athlete to have won a medal in a Games. He won a bronze in the 10,000 metres in 1963. In September the GEIC hope to add a few more.
An example of the weather cond itions: On a flooded discus circle,
19-year-old Joetama Panapasa elected
to take a standing throw in the discus event—a decision which earned him the winning throw of 121 ft 3 in.
Fiji's Tuisawaqa Vereniki was second with a throw of 119 ft 4 in.— Photo: Bal Ram.