Sports Bodies Must Pay To Keep Gradings Secret

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30886, 20 October 1965, Page 22

Sports Bodies Must Pay To Keep Gradings Secret

•■The Press" Special Service WELLINGTON. National sports associations will have to guarantee the costs involved if they wish to keep confidential the categories in which athletes were placed for future Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

The New Zealand Olympic and British Empire Games Association last night decided to defer consideration of the proposal until after the national associations had made a decision on whether they were willing to guarantee the costs for their nominees.

The chairman (Mr H. I. Austad) said that even if the

associations want the gradings kept confidential New Zealand would still have to send two grades of competitors to future games.

The only way the association could implement a move like this, he said, was to get a guarantee from each of the sports that they would bear the costs of each of their competitors. Raise Own Funds

There would be no need for a public announcement of the gradings of the athletes if the national sports associations were prepared to make this guarantee, he said. The new procedure could mean the sports would have to raise the funds required to send the athletes individually. Organised fund raising, as had been done in Auckland and Canterbury, could be stopped by this procedure. Mr L. W. Woods said that no matter what procedure was adopted the categories the ath-

letes were placed in would eventually come out. -\\\. have had no trouble with the existing scheme.” Mr S. Kitt said that if the categories were kept confidential it would assist associations in their fund raising. Metric Distances The association will not support moves by Australia to have Commonwealth Games athletic events staged over metric distances. Mr Austad said the move would be made at the November meeting of the British Empire Games Committee and had been referred to the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association. He said it had decided the move was "premature Only when all countries competing in the games adopted metric distances for their national championship meetings would it be the time to change to them at the Commonwealth Games.