SKIERS TO GET TWO NEW RACES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31230, 30 November 1966, Page 19

SKIERS TO GET TWO NEW RACES

Two new ski races will be held at Coronet Peak next winter, as part of the ski race fortnight agreed upon by the New Zealand Ski Council for the South Island and national championships.

The Mount Cook and Southern Lakes Tourist Corporation will hold a sponsored meeting on August 5-6 for the Coronet Cup, a meeting to which New Zealand’s leading skiers will be invited. This is likely to be a week after the Bata Cup, another sponsored race, is held in Canterbury.

Four days, August 7-10, will be devoted to race training after the Coronet Cup, and on August 11 the W. D. and H. O. Wills giant slalom will be held.

This race will largely replace the Cantago meeting which used to be held at Lake Ohau each year but which had to be cancelled last year because it clashed with the New Zealand championships.

It will be between skiers from the Canterbury and Southern Districts ski associations and will also help fill the gap created when Mount Ruapehu’s clubs withdrew from the Wills inter-associa-tion teams’ competition. On August 12-13 the South

Island championships are to be held and the New Zealand championships begin immediately afterwards. This programme has been devised to give ski racers as much concentrated racing and training as possible. However, between the Coronet Cup and the nationals there are no races in which North Island skiers can officially compete. The plan will lose some of its value if these skiers decide to return home during the intermediate week and come back for the New Zealand championships.