Fijian 800m. champion will run in Christchurch

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33091, 5 December 1972, Page 36

Fijian 800m. champion will run in Christchurch

Middle-distance running in Canterbury will be strengthened this season by the presence of the Fijian 800 metres champion, Valu Moceiwaqa.

A private in the Fijian Army, the 19-year-old athlete is attending a course at Burnham Military Camp and plans to compete regularly in Christchurch until he leaves New Zealand next April. During his stay he will be guided by New Zealand’s Olympic coach, Mr V. Briedis, and has high hopes of improving on his best 800 metres time of Imin 58sec. "My coach in Fiji considers that just training is not enough. He feels that I should seek as much competition as possible while I am in New Zealand and that this

will help me improve,’’ Moceiwaqa said. Although he has already been in New Zealand a while, he did not make his interclub debut at Rugby Park until last Saturday and then it was not in one of his specialist events. He ran in

the B-grade 200 metres, finishing just out of a place. But Moceiwaqa does not pretend that he is a sprinter and regarded this as just a warm-up event. His main events are the 800 metres and the 1500 metres. Shortly before leaving Fiji, he defeated

the South Pacific 1500 metres champion, Sam Bulai, over the longer distance. His best time for the 1500 metres is 4min Jssec. This is — by New Zealand standards—not particularly fast, but Moceiwaqa has high hopes of reducing it to less than 4min during his stay. In the 800 metres, he has set his sights on a time of Imin 50sec. Although his own times are far superior, one of New Zealand’s leading middledistance runners in recent seasons, A. Gilmour, is not prepared to dismiss the prospects of the Fijian champion without giving him a fair trial. “You never know what these chaps are capable of once they get some proper coaching.” MAIN TARGET Moceiwaqa’s main target is to win a place in the Fijian team which will contest the Pan Pacific Games in the Philippines in 1974. Another prominent Fijian athlete, S. Ligamamada, also made his debut at Rugby Park on Saturday. A shot and discus exponent, he finished third in the B-grade discus.