Gymnasts set sights on Games

Press, 15 October 1976, Page 24

Gymnasts set sights on Games

By

KEVIN TUTTY

Five Christchurch gymnasts — one man and five women — have started an extensive training programme which they hope will culminate in their selection in the team for the New Zealand Games next January. Four of the gymnasts — Greg Robertson (above), Kirsty Durward, Pam Hall, and Raylene Hollier — are from the Alpha club and are coached by Alf Holt, and the other, Sue Millar, is from the Christchurch School of Gymnastics and coached by Don Comes.

One trial for men and two for women will be held later in the year and this is the first target for the competitors. The men’s trial is at Auckland on December 11 and there will be one unlucky person. The first six will be chosen for the Games although only the top four will compete, so the onus will be on filling one of the first four places.

The women will have trials at Christchurch on December 18 and at Hawera on January 4 as part of the New Zealand Gymnastic Association coaching school. Ten women will be eligible

for the trials — they have to have averaged eight points per exercise in competition — and the team will be chosen on the same basis as the men’s.

The gymnasts under Mr Holt have started training again after a rest of a month. They are training four days a week, three hours a day, and will increase this to six days over the next few weeks as they finish school examinations.

Canterbury has about a quarter of the gymnasts who will compete at the trials, but Mr Holt feels they do not get enough competition from

each other in events or in training. "Once you have reached national level and have won most of the awards vo” to aim for something higher. What they ideally nec~ is international competition twice a year. “It is too much of a shock for our gymnasts to enter world competition, such as the Olympics and world championships, coming from New Zealand. They need more competition between these major events.”

The Christchurch gymnasts are all young * including Robertson. He will be the

youngest member at the men’s trial. If they miss the New Zealand Games team however, they have wider aims — to represent New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, and at the world championships in Paris, within a couple of months of each other in 1978.

The world championships are first and if a team is sent Mr Holt would like to see it stay overseas until the Commonwealth Games. He thinks New Zealand has a very good chance of finishing at least third at Edmonton in the women’s team event.