Top water polo player retires

Press, 13 June 1979, Page 38

Top water polo player retires

By

RAY CAIRNS

lan Gunthorp’s outstanding representative water polo career, which has been winding down for the last three years, is at an end. Gunthorp confirmed yesterday that he has retired from all first-class play; he will no longer be available for Newmarket in the national club championship, or for Auckland in the A grade provincial championship. Now 33, Gunthorp made his name as one of the most outstanding Canterbury players in its long history, starting 17 years ago in the team which won the national junior championship and progressing through to captain the senior representative team at the tender age of 20. That was in 1967, when Canterbury shared the title

with Auckland and Wellington at the Centennial Pool, but Gunthorp had to wait another eight years before he finally won a share of a senior title outright, and he was again Canterbury captain.

His career had many high points: two trips to Australia with New Zealand junior teams, and another with New Zealand Universities in 1966. He was also the first water polo player to be the Canterbury “swimmer of the year.”

But he also felt keen disappointment in 1974 when, a first-choice in the minds of most for the trail-blazing tour of Europe, Gunthorp was inexplicably omitted. That, he confirmed yesterday, was his most disappointing experience in water polo “but I have had a pretty good run.”