Rowing Official Will Make World Tour

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32308, 28 May 1970, Page 17

Rowing Official Will Make World Tour

The Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh and the world rowing championships in Canada have been included on the itinerary of Mr B. R. Walker, a leading Canterbury rowing administrator, who will leave on a four-month overseas tour on Monday.

Mr Walker, a past president of the Canterbury and New Zealand associations and president of the Avon club, also plans to visit the Henley course in England and the 1972 Munich Olympic Games rowing site.

As an executive member of Commonwealth Games Promotion (New Zealand), Mr Walker will undertake some of the preparatory work before the arrival of the official six-man delegation seeking the 1974 Games for Christchurch. DINNER ARRANGED “The first part of my holiday will probably not be a holiday.. I will check on arrangements made here that could be tidied up. We intend to hold a New Zealand dinner, with New Zealand food and wines, to spread goodwill, and some of the arrangements will be left to me.

“We may also have a New Zealand room, as in Jamaica in 1966, with posters and other methods of selling New Zealand to the delegates. “I attended the meeting of the Commonwealth Games Association in Mexico as an observer, and was impressed by the real family feeling, which I believe has been the pattern all along. It is a shame that the recent boycott threats have detracted from this attitude.” COMPARING AGES While overseas, Mr Walker plans to meet officials of the Avon club in England to pass on “fraternal greetings” from his own club. “It will be interesting to find out which l

club is the older—we started in 1881,” he said.

Henley—“the mecca of all rowing men”—and Munich — “where I understand they are digging a new course or extending a lake” —will follow before the world championships in the first week of September. Mr Walker passed his international umpire’s licence examination while in Mexico in 1968 and hopes to comply with a ruling—that such licences be exercised within two years or relinquished, while in Canada. This stipulation has provided difficulties for Australian and New Zealand umpires because of the infrequency of international contests in the Southern Hemisphere.

“Now that the sport is no longer part of the Commonwealth Games, rowing countries in the Commonwealth

set their sights at the world championships, where standards are equal to those of the Olymics,” Mr Walker said.

He said that New Zealand may well win the world eightoar event with a crew comprising W. Cole (stroke), W. Veldman, R. Joyce, M. Hunter, N. Mills, R. Collinge, G. Robertson, and M. Watkinson (bow). “I realise this selection breaks up the gold medal four of Joyce, D. Storey, Collinge, and Cole, but it would be necessary if we are to make the best eight in the world our top priority,” he added.