Kerrs Reach dropped

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34084, 23 February 1976, Page 24

Kerrs Reach dropped

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND.

It has now been officially decreed that Lake Karapiro will become the venue for the New Zealand rowing team’s initial training for the Montreal Olympics.

The decision to change training locations from Kerrs Reach in Christchurch to Karapiro was made by the rowing council at a meeting in Wellington, after consideration of a report handed down by the tours committee.

The tours committee’s nod

for Karapiro was given in the light of submissions made by the Auckland Rowing Association that Karapiro is the most advantageous training centre. In its report to the tours committee, the association stressed: good weather conditions, long stretches for distance rowing, buoyed lanes for speed work, gymnasium and medical facilities, better environmental factors, the promise of employment from business firms in the Cambridge-Hamilton area for the oarsmen for the duration of the six to seven week training camp, alternative water nearby as a variation to training.

The club captain of the

Cambridge club, Mr Dave Blackie, who must perhaps wonder at the financial implications for a small country club, says there will be no trouble housing the squad at Karapiro. Mr Blackie said that each of the first 10 firms approached for employment for the oarsmen had given affirmative answers. “There have been no problems,” said Mr Blackie. “And we are sure we can confidently carry out this great trust the rowing council has placed in us.” “The Canterbury Rowing Association has always been amenable to squads going around the venues and we’ve certainly had a fair share of the crews here,” said the president of the Canterbury Legion of Oarsmen (Mr Jim Renaut) last evening, commenting on the council’s decision. “It’s a pity that the council has decided to make a change at this stage though. If the decision was going to have been made it should have been made last year. “They’re giving away a very successful training venue for one which has yet to be proved. But what concerns us is not the fact that it has left here but the way it has been done, with the rubbishing of Kerrs Reach." Mr Renaut said that the local association hoped everything went well at Karapiro but it was likely that there would be increased costs for the New Zealand Amateur Rowing Association, as a bus would probably be necessary to run the members back and forward to work in Hamilton. Hopefully for local followers—though interest in the squads has fallen off over the last year or two—Mr Renaut’s prediction that “this could be the end of the line for Kerrs Reach if the move to Karapiro is successful,” will not come true.