Golden sail

for Guam

Whatever happened to the Tahiti yachtsmen who swept the board at the Tahiti Games? There, they took all three places. At Guam, on beauti ful Apra Harbour, there wasn’t a French sail to be seen.

The 12 yachtsmen were from any where but the French territories, though one, Allan Holmes, was from the New Hebrides—the “English” sector.

The 14 ft Laser was used for the competition and proved popular with the entrants though the Guam crew had had little experience with them.

That didn’t matter, however. Guam’s Phil Drips took the gold medal, los ing only 19.7 points, comfortably ahead of Papua New Guinea’s Kevin Read, 30.4, and Fiji’s Bill Gardiner, 37.7.

Bill Gardiner had a good lead over the field after the first three races but the pressure was too much for him and he gradually slipped behind as his finishing position in subsequent races worsened. For Drips, the last three races were under the best poss ible conditions—heavy winds, just right for a heavy sailor. Earlier, winds had varied from moderate, to light, to calm.

Gardiner, at 21, was the second youngest competitor. The youngest was Fa’avave Foifua, an 18-year-old American Samoan girl, who com peted against 11 men under the same conditions and wasn’t last. She came 11th.

“I felt pretty good being the only girl”, she said.

Allan Holmes, of New Hebrides, had a large-size chip on his shoulder.

He told PIM arrangements and food were “pretty lousy”. Guam’s Yacht Club, he said, was splendid but he and his yachting colleagues spent a fortune on taxi fares.

The international juror for yacht ing, Mike Tattersall, of Auckland, had more than an official interest in the competition. The Lasers came from his factory which makes them under franchise from a Canadian firm. They build about 15 a week and export 40 per cent all over the Pacific.

Off Merizo, near Guam’s Umatac Bay, was a different kind of water sport—underwater spearfishing, the only sport with no human spectators, though some of the land-based sports had only a handful, so far removed from the Games scene were some of the events.

The French Polynesians, who go in for the sport in a big way, had things much their own way. They took the team gold with more than double the points—awarded for each fish caught and weight of catch—of the silver medallists, New Caledonia, with Wallis & Futuna, more French men, in third place. All three in dividual medals went to French Poly nesia.

Soccer made little impact on the Games. It was exiled to the Washing ton High playing fields and never attracted more than 200 spectators at any time—and most of those were other competitors housed only yards away.

French Polynesia took the soccer gold with New Caledonia second and the Solomons (total medals six) the bronze.

Below, the Solomon Islands goalkeeper flies through the air for a save in the soccer match with Guam.