Kathy’s fight rewarded

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 24

Kathy’s fight rewarded

NZPA London A 14-year-old American athlete was given the sports |V. C. yesterday — the Victoria Sports Club award for valour, the Press Association reported. Kathy Miller, from Arizona, was presented with the award by Sir StanleyRous in recognition of her eight months fight-back from a hospital intensive care unit, where she was in a coma, to the running track. Last year, she finished third in her first come-back 10,000 metres race.

Kathy was in a coma for 10 weeks after a lorry accident threatened not only her athletics career but to make her dumb and crippled. But she fought back and is now 90 per cent fit. Only one shadow was cast on the luncheon, at London’s Guildhall. It was the vacant seat reserved for the climber, Doug Scott, who would have won the award if he had not withdrawn from the nominations list. Scott’s name was listed on the lucheon menu as the first speaker to respond to the presentation of the awards, indicating that the original plan by the sporting club was to give Doug Scott the main award and Kathy Miller a separate special award for valour.

In the event Kathy was given the supreme award and Titus Manabo’o, the first South African black athlete to win a national athletic award, was given the special prize. Scott had been nominated for the award for his survival in a fall on Mount Everest last year after which he endured an agonising six-day craw! back to safety.

A spokesman said of the affair: “We still wanted him to come. We thought it would make us all feel a lot better. It seems Doug Scott was too embarrassed by everything that had happened to attend.”