GOLD MEDAL WAS WORTH $400 Games Champion Had To Help Pay Costs

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32358, 25 July 1970, Page 16

GOLD MEDAL WAS WORTH $400

Games Champion Had To Help Pay Costs

The 23-year-old Trentham nurseryman, Harry Kent, may now think that a $4OO gold medal is not a bad bargain after all. That was the amount he had to pay himself to get to Edinburgh to win the 1000 metres time trial after the people of Wellington rallied insufficiently to the appeal for funds to send local athletes to the Commonwealth Games.

This was the second great hurdle Kent had had to overcome before he lined up on the Meadowbank Velodrome yesterday. Last January his father died" and Kent then decided to retire from cycling.

, |of 32 was Leslie King (Tri- . nidad and Tobago), who recorded Imin 10.40 sec. The Jocelyn Lovell, was ■ third, in Imin 10.535ec. t Double First ! The gold medal was the 1 first won by New Zealand in these games and the first in Commonwealth Games track I cycling. ; “I felt fine before I went . on the track: now I can just , walk again," he said, five min- ' utes after the race ended. 1 “My legs were shattered ■ after 1 finished that ride. “I couldn’t see the lines on the track over the last lap. i all I knew was that I man- , aged to keep on the boards.; : I was aiming to beat the I Games record and my times j in training had shown I could do it. I Had Long Wail “If I had had my way, I would have been here as a road cyclist, but the selectors felt I should be in the track team. From now on I will concentrate on track riding.”

Without his father, who had been the guiding light in his training,: and with the time-con-suming family business to manage, he thought he could not find the time nor the inclination to continue. However, staunch friends talked him back on the track, and to his confrontation with the clotk, in competition with the Commonwealth’s best riders.

He set a Commonwealth Games record for the event, his Imin B.6sec beating the previous mark by o.9lsec and his own previous best time by 3.3lsec.

His nearest rival in the field

All reports of the Commonwealth Games on this page have been supplied by N.Z.P.A.’s staff correspondents in Edinburgh.

and then had to .“sweat it out” while the remaining 13 competitors tried to better his record. It was an anxious time.

The Australian star, Daryl Perkins, was rated the only one likely to better it, and a very fast time seemed probable from the Australian as he rode powerfully through the first three laps. But he began to tire in the back straight, and lost his chance. Inspired by Kent’s outstanding effort, the Canterbury cyclist, Blair Stockwell, beat his previous best time for the event by about 3sec. He finished in Imin 12.335ec to take tenth place. Beaten To Phone The first thing Kent did when he left the Velodrome was to telephone his mother in Trentham. “1 wanted to be the first to tell her the news," he said. But when he spoke to his mother he found that an amateur radio ham in New Zealand had heard the result of his race and telephoned her. During his cycling career, Kent has suffered concussion in falls six times. In one crash, he badly darr 'ged his right shoulder, and although surgeons successfully repaired the injury, the right shoulder is lower than the left

Kent was the nineteenth rider to compete in the race,

These injuries have made him wary of rough tactics on the track. He freely confesses, “I shock easily. It took me half-an-hour to get over the race with Australian Gordon Johnson yesterday.” Struck By Elbow In this race Johnson, already beaten once by Kent in a heat of their semi-final of the 1000 metres scratch, was determined to ride the New Zealander off the track. He forced Kent into the upper wall round the 45-degree banked board track three times and struck him with an elbow. Kent subsequently lost in a ride-off for the bronze medal in the event Now, the gold medal has made him forget all his other disappointments. “Against the clock, and with no opposition to worry about, I felt good,” he said.