the Western

Heave ho for the Western Samoans!

What makes a man go in for a sport like weightlifting? It’s much harder work than most sports, but Mr Oscar State travelled all the way from London to oversee the weight lifting events as international juror.

It can be a dangerous sport too. A weightlifter died only a few months ago when he slipped while lifting.

The whole contraption fell on him and killed him.

There were no accidents, however, at Dededo Junior High School, in the middle of the island, venue for both weightlifting and judo. But con testants were far from happy with arrangements.

For some obscure reason, the officials refused to release Games equipment for several sports until the last minute, almost. This angered and inconvenienced the weightlifters particularly. They had no equipment to train with—and you don’t fly with a couple of tonnes of iron.

They nearly lifted the roof in their annoyance and the Guam team re fused to play. In fact, but for the Island temperament, compromising and taking things lightly, even in weightlifting, all the teams might have walked out. Some lifters complained that, without the weights to train with, they would soon be out of con dition. One, PNG’s Michael Mexico, had another complaint—the food.

“It’s not the right stuff”, he told PIM. “I’ve already lost a lot of weight”. But, he didn’t lose too much. He made it as a light-heavy and took the silver medal.

Conditions didn’t bother the Western Samoans. Their team of 10 lifters went home with six golds, two silver and a bronze. Papua New Guinea was next best with three golds and a silver.

The judo men, Frenchmen almost to a man—there were also four American Samoans and two from PNG—got through their programme without a hitch, that’s if you can call a team walkout something else. The Guam team, containing the Bias family champions, refused to com pete. The Bias boys, who had caused a commotion at Papeete with com plaints about confused arrangements, decided at Guam that blood’s no thicker than anything else connected with the Games, and pulled out to

the great embarrassment of their countrymen.

They decided to quit because organisation was bad and the Guam officials wouldn’t finance a trip to Japan to enable them to complete their training.

As the Frenchmen outnumbered the rest by five to one, it wasn’t sur prising that they took 21 of the 23 medals on offer.

New Caledonia captured five golds, three silver and three bronze, French Polynesia, a gold, two silver and seven bronze, and American Samoa had a silver and a bronze.

With this sort of setup, with domination by one or two countries of sports which are confined to those countries, it’s little wonder that countries like New Caledonia can look so good in the medals table.

Western Samoa's Paul Wallwork wins the

weightlifters' middle-heavyweight gold

medal.