FIRST WOMAN FOR BA TON’S LAST LEG

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33442, 25 January 1974, Page 1

FIRST WOMAN FOR BA TON’S LAST LEG

Sense and sentiment were blended beautifully in the choice of Mrs Sylvia Potts as the runner to carry the Queen’s message baton on the last leg of a relay involving 1300 runners.

Mrs Potts is an outstandingly good athlete, and a member of the (present New Zealand [team. So her selection made sense. The sentimental side was a shade more important.

Four years ago at Edinburgh, she fell, two strides from the finish of the 1500 metres final, and had almost certain victory snatched from her. There must have been some compensation yesterday for her cruel misfortune in Scotland.

The baton changed hands so often yesterday—the Mayor of Christchurch (Mr N. G. Pickering) handed it on for carriage by a string .of runners before Mrs Potts acepted it. But Mrs Potts did not know until 9.30 a.m. that she had been given the distinction of carrying the baton to the Duke of Edinburgh. The New Zealand team manager (Mr J. W. Holley) told her to collect her running gear and track suit and meet Mr R. S. Scott, ‘

chairman of the Games organising committee. She was told officially of her task at 11 a.m.

“I had a good idea, when (told by Mr Holley to get my (gear, that I had been chosen. 11 tried hard to think what (else it could be,” Mrs Potts (said. She felt honoured to be a woman “out there.”

The warm reception from the crowd made the bearing of the baton round the stadium very easy, she said, "It was not until I stopped that I realised how heavy it was.” Mrs Potts said she was competing at Christchurch to prove she could run as fast as she did at Edinburgh. “But I won’t necessarily win a medal,” she added.

“I might have to run 4min 18sec (the winning time at Edinburgh) to make the final here,” she said. “I am sure that if the Games were not in New Zealand I would not be competing.” Mrs Potts, who is 31. and an Auckland housewife, is the first woman to carry the baton in to the stadium at a Games opening ceremony.

But this hardly warranted the rather laboured support of ( her choice made in a news! media hand-out, which said! that the selection of a woman; to carry the baton was in l keeping' with Canterbury’s long tradition of being associated with women’s rights. The document went quite deeply into the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Act, the fact that New Zealand’s first woman M.P. was from Christchurch, that a Christchurch Prime Minister (Mr Kirk) had set in motion machinery to bring equal pay for women, and that women were in key positions in the Games organisation.