Wheelchair Athletes Begin Competition

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 17

Wheelchair Athletes Begin Competition

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent) LONDON. More than 450 athletes from 27 countries paraded on Sunday for the colourful opening ceremony of the International Games for the Disabled and Paralysed at Stoke Mandeville, 30 miles from London.

Among them were 13 members of the New Zealand team now in Britain for the Paraplegic Commonwealth Games to be held in Edinburgh two weeks from now. The fourteenth New Zealander, Miss Louise Pentecost, of Hamilton, spent the weekend with her grandparents while she was recovering from bronchitis. As with most wheelchair games, most events at Stoke Mandeville are being run in grades one to six—grade one being for athletes of the most disablement. Of the New Zealanders competing on Sunday, L. Close (Dunedin) and J. H.

Savage (Kawerau) did best, reaching the table tennis semi finals for grades two and three respectively.

T. Marrett (Dunedin) wpn bis heat of the breaststroke swimming for grade two and will be in the final, but P. J. Curry (Wellington) was eliminated in the men’s snooker and R. T. Ngata (Hamilton) was beaten in the table tennis quarter-finals. In the archery N. Brown (Auckland) and W. R. Lean (Dunedin) were both ranked in the middle of a big field, on unofficial standings at the half-way mark in the “F.1.T.A.” round of shooting. The games will continue throughout the week.