ELEVENTH OLYMPIC GAMES

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21245, 17 August 1934, Page 20

ELEVENTH OLYMPIC GAMES

NEW ZEALAND ACCEPTS INVITATION IN GERMANY "The New Zealanders, like the Australians and the South Africans, are a very open air and athletic-minded •people," says the latest bulletin issued by the committee organising the eleventh Olympic Games at Berlin in 1936. "The Pacific climate and the great open spaces of the island countries offer exceptional opportunities for this predilection. Thus the ideal of the Olympic Games always found enthusiastic support in New Zealand, and this interest was widened and intensified by the visit in 1932 of Count Baillet-Latour, president of the international Olympic committee. Although Jlew Zealand's population numbers scarcely one and a half millions, and therefore it is difficult to raise the |unds for the necessary long sea voyages to international athletic contests such as the Olympic Games, yet the country was excellently represented at both the last Olympiads." Exactly half a year has passed since the Berlin and Garmisch-Parten-kirchen organisation committees issued to the world the invitations to the Olympic Games of 1936, and already 32 of the 53 nations to whom the invitations were addressed have given official notification that they will send teams to the games, the bulletin says. France, Spain, New Zealand, and Columbia are the latest to announce their acceptances, and the elaborate preparations in Germany are now well advanced. France will send 300 representatives, and Spain will compete in the swim3ning, hockey, football, lawn tennis, and pistol shooting. Columbia will jiave a small team. "New Zealand's decision to participate in the Olympic Games of 1936 ■will be hailed with delight everywhere," the bulletin says. "The presence of such rare visitors from the other hemisphere will give expression 1o the world-wide strength of the Olympic ideal."