Sp Games Fever

Starts As Fiji

Lays Its Plans

Between 2500 and 2700 Pacific Islanders representing poss ibly 18 countries will converge on Fiji for the sixth Souths Pacific Games from August 28 to September 8 more tham the total number of competitors at the Commonwealth Gamesi in Edmonton, Canada, last year. Robert Keith-Reid report si

from Suva.

The sixth games undoubtedly will be the South Pacific’s big gest and almost certainly, with the benefit of hindsight, the best organised. The bill is likely to be about SF2SO 000 and it’s up to Fiji to find the money.

Games fever is only now

beginning to grip Fiji’s athletes

but officials (led by Com mander Stan Brown, of Fiji’s naval squadron), working be hind the scenes to get this

major project off the ground,

have been hard at it for more than a year.

Buckhurst Park on Laucala Bay, scene of the first South Pa cific Games in 1963, is the centre of activity. Public Works

and private contractors are* working flat out to complete a $3.5 million national sportsl

complex.

Work at the turn of the yean was on schedule. If all according to plan the stadiunrr will be finished in May. Partial because it had for years beem under pressure to do something] of the kind, partly because iti wanted to ease unemployment!: in the building industry, ancbi perhaps not unmindful of ther

prestige, the Fiji Government!!

is intent on making Buckhurste Park a project of which ther nation can be proud.

When finished, the stadiumn will accommodate 20 000 spec-o

Shape of things to come . . . artist’s impression of Buckhurst Parh[?]

tators with more than 4000 undercover. It will have an all weather track surrounding a rugby union and soccer pitch and areas for athletics field events. It will be floodlit and have a gymnasium with seating for 2000.

The ‘Games Village’, con veniently, will be on the University of the South Pacific campus which adjoins Buckhurst Park.

Apart from some soccer and rugby matches which will be played at Lautoka 250 km by road from Suva on Viti Levu’s west coast and about a 90 min ute trip by air and bus all ■ events will be held inside the Suva city limits.

A fund-raising committee has set itself a target of $lOO 000, pinning its hopes on

f running a successful lottery

with a $53 000 first prize.

Another source of revenue will be from an arrangement with a company which has been given exclusive rights to use the I games emblem.

The committee is also trying : to persuade the Harlem Globe trotters basketball team to visit Fiji to ‘christen’ the gym [ nasium with exhibition ; matches.

The 18 games sports will be athletics, basketball, lawn ten i nis, soccer, swimming, bowls,

boxing, cricket, golf, hockey,

judo, netball, weightlifting,

yachting, rugby union, squash,

table tennis and volleyball.

At the end of December, 17 entries had been received with Tokelau saying that it would make a decision at its January meeting of chiefs. ‘lf Tokelau are in it, it will be the first games in which all 18 eligible countries will compete together,’ said the secretary of the games committee Brian

Wightman.

Papua New Guinea will be

fielding the largest visiting

squad - 320 - with Tahiti sending 263. New Caledonia has chartered four aircraft for spectators alone. Other entrants are: American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, Gilberts, Guam, Nauru, New Hebrides, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tonga, SP Trust Territory, Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna and West ern Samoa.