CORONET CUP WINNER.—The North Canterbury skier, M. Gardiner, in action in the giant slalom at Coronet Peak, Queenstown. Gardiner won this event and carried on to take the combined aggregate.

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32362, 30 July 1970, Page 19

CORONET CUP WINNER.—The North Canterbury skier, M. Gardiner, in action in the giant slalom at Coronet Peak, Queenstown. Gardiner won this event and carried on to take the combined aggregate.

(From Our Own Reporter?

QUEENSTOWN. With only the downhill event remaining, C. Womersley (Canterbury) is all set to win the New Zealand ski-ing championship for the second successive year and complete a “grand-slam” by winning all three events in the process. Womersley, and Miss R. Willis (Canterbury), who has also produced top form to lead the women’s championship, are leading by similar margins. If both skiers can complete the downhill course without incident, the titles should be theirs. However, the race is

considered the most difficult of the three. It is run at high speeds and the top skiers reach more than 50 miles an hour in the fastest sections. Many of the skiers earlier in the week were thinking of withdrawing from the race because they considered the course dangerous, but they have now decided to compete. Ruts on several areas of the course will have to be levelled and the snow on the remainder of the course packed. Womersley has very little to fear as his main opponents have either been eliminated from the over-all championship or are so far behind on

points that they pose little threat W. Gardiner (Canterbury) withdrew with an injury, and while M. Gardiner (Canterbury) is in the seventh place, T. Stewart (Canterbury) and B. Nansen (Wellington) are also out of the running. Miss Willis and Womersley are 21,000 points ahead of the runners-up on the points system being used to determine over-all placings, while the difference between the second and third placings is 4600 points in the men’s and only 450 in the women’s.