Barking Dogs, Speeding Traffic

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31123, 28 July 1966, Page 19

Barking Dogs, Speeding Traffic

(Special Crspdt. KINGSTON (Jamaica). New Zealand's Empire Games team is settling in well in Jamaica but there are some minor “troubles in paradise.” The track and field athletes found that some of the facilities at the training track near the main stadium are fairly crude, and some even dangerous.

Their coach, Mr F. Sharpley, has asked for improvements and these will be urged by the New Zealand team manager, Mr R. Shakespeare, at today’s team managers’ meeting. Mr Sharpjey found the pole vault arrangements needed considerable improvement, as did the high jump approach. He has also asked for more practice hurdles for the athletes. In the games village New Zealanders are being troubled by barking and whining dogs disturbing their sleep, and by

the dangerous speed of traffic about the village roads. Mr Shakespeare has offered the “services” of the New Zealand shooting team to get rid of the dogs, and has asked for severe speed limits to be placed on village traffic before someone is killed. A truck load of the team’s gear arrived yesterday with a piece of luggage missing. The only equipment still to reach the village is the cycling teams’ training machine which is in the hold of a strike-bound ship. The swimming pool’s new

diving board is also somewhere at the bottom of a ship, and officials are making efforts to get it unloaded.

The New Zealand team's down-to-earth approach to training and the helpfulness the “old games hands” are showing towards young competitors have impressed visitors to the village. There is a much more relaxed and pleasant air about this New Zealand camp than in Tokyo, and the athletes look as if they are really enjoying themselves.