Athletics Boycott

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32251, 20 March 1970, Page 14

Athletics Boycott

Sir,—Mr Cross is reported yesterday as saying, “None of the athletes who competed at the South African Games knew that they would be boycotted.” This is too much for his admiring public to swallow. The Athletic Association was so well aware of widespread opposition to the holding of the all-white South African games that it tried to avert the wrath to come by the legal fiction that New Zealand was not sending an official team but that its athletes were competing as private individuals. One must presume that Mr Cross’s surprise at the latest ban is as Machiavellian as the association’s original policy. Let us hope that he will come to learn before he has killed international sport by his insistence on sport for sport’s sake, that many of his fellow human beings believe that there are far more important aspects of life to be protected and fought for before they can “Play up and play the game.”—Yours,'etc, S. V. R. YOUNG. March 19, 1970.

Sir, —It is to be hoped that there will be no sympathy whatsoever for the athletic organisations whose plans have been upset by the lastminute boycott of New Zealanders in New Zealand by the Kenyan runners. For the last 18 months warnings have been issued through every form of news media that the African-ruled Countries are really only interested in in-

ternational sport as a means of imposing political blackemail. Their hypocrisy is made worse in that, without exception, the conditions in their own countries for their minorities are far worse than

anything in South Africa. It is time that appeasement of these people came to a stop. If these countries are ever to learn international manners and that they have no right to interfere in other countries’ affairs, now is the time.—Yours, etc., ' THE WALRUS. ' March 19, 1970.