Christine Garvin's Rise To N.Z. Champion

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 81, 5 April 1941, Page 10 (Supplement)

Christine Garvin's Rise To N.Z. Champion

pHRISTINE GARVIN learnt to swim quite a long time ago when she was about four years old. 'T. liart an old dog." she said, '•ami wo used to go swimming together. He was my first coach, lie taught mi-> to 'dog paddle.' lili'l when I got tired I used to hang on to his tail. l>ilt 1 did not take up swimming seriously until 1 was about 1 had suffered tuliercular glands. liad ail operation, and had been told liy my doctor to swim my way hack to health. That's four years ago, and T am quite recovered." And she's the New Zealand champion, too. Christine, whom .1 met when she came up from Kotorna to attempt to break records in Auckland, told me some more of her recovery : — '•The exercises, the healthy iit'e. the correct breathing and tinfact that one has to he in lied early have all made me well again," she said. "The training. too, is good for health, even if it becomes a hit boring at times. I am not allowed to dance, to ride—and I just adore riding horses —when I am training. Not even to ride a hike. Every muscle in my body must be *ii|>|de. and swimming has to come before anything else. 1 often wonder whether it is worth it." Then she told how she had won her tirst national titles at the New Zealand championship meeting at Invercargill three years ago. had retained them at Wellington, and lost one. the i'li) yards, to Islay l'urdie. of Otago—her chief rival during the period—at New Plymouth last January. It was before she made her unsuccessful attempts on the records, last Wednesday afternoon, that F talked to Christine. The following remarks on sportsmanship, and an uncuiirent in her swimming experiences were not inspired by anything that happened that evening. It was not her fault that the so-called open scratch races developed into solo swims. . . . Hut she did —on Wednesday afternoon —have something to say about poor sportsmanship in the sport of swimming. '"It is not so much the swimmers them-eKes who are poor sports," she said. '"And ihis is especially true of the younger memliers. It is the older people who make all the trouble. They start whispering campaigns, they get up to all kinds of tricks to put one swimmer against another. I have often heard that I am going to do some outlandish thing to someone—heard it from someone else, and not known a tiling about it. Or that some girl is going to upset a race for me when she is completely innocent. Some fathers and mothers get so intent upon their own young people winning races that they forget there is such a thing as sport. It spoils the fun. If the older people would just lea\e us ah ne we would have swimming a good, clean sport. Personally 1 don't, think that winning races is half as important as being a good loser. I often feel that I would sooner have friends than win races, and it does not seem to lie possible to do both." Miss Garvin has a pair of clear blue, wide-set eyes and a wealth of naturally curly fair hair. She looks the embodiment of health and youth and all that they stand for.