Fencing delegate stands firm

Press, 21 June 1980, Page 1

Fencing delegate stands firm

PA Wellington The man at the centre of the latest storm surrounding New Zealand’s participation in the Olympic Games, Mr Richard Peterson, stands firm on his ideals.

At the latest meeting of the New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association in Wellington on Tuesday, Mr Peterson, the fencing and modern pentathlon representative, voted for going to the Games. The final 8-7 decision meant his vote was decisive, but yesterday the president of the New Zealand Fencing Association (Mr P. Temple) attacked his delegate’s vote. Mr Peterson voted in favour of the team’s going to Moscow when the Fencing Association had recommended otherwise.

According to Mr Temple, had Mr Peterson voted against a team’s going to the Games, as fencing had wanted, the N.Z.O.C.G.A.

vote would have stood, 8-7, the other way. “I represent the Fencing Association and act in the way I think best serves its interest,” said Peterson, in Wellington last evening. “What is done is done, but I don’t think it is completely contrary, for one must look at the whole Olympic movement, and not just one’s own sport,” he said. “We should be loath to cut the ground from beneath the feet of other sports. The fencing people can remove or censure me because of my actions.

“Most appeared to think

it was over to the two individual sports left—canoeing and modern pentathlon. “It has now been debated virtually four times over whether to go, and each time the answer has been the same: they have voted for a team to go.”

Mr Peterson was adamant it was “quite different” to vote to withdraw a big team than to vote for a group of four. “The feeling of ‘Thou sha.lt not go’ comes into it,” Mr Peterson said. The secretary of the N.Z.O.C.G.A. (Mr G. Craig) confirmed that Mr Peterson

had cast two votes, as was his right, for fencing and modern pentathlon, but he declined to say which way the votes went.

“Often an association will write in and say which way its representative will vote on an issue, and sometimes for reasons of his own, that representative may vote differently,” said Mr Craig. “It’s nothing to do with us, simply a, matter for an association and its representative.”

During Tuesday’s meeting, there was a plea that delegates vote according to what they considered

best for the over-all good of the Olympic association. Delegates were told to forget about their own associations if necessary. The Fencing Association’s executive expected to hold a meeting in Auckland today to consider Mr Peterson’s “conscience vote,” Mr Temple said last evening.

But he admitted there was “not much” the association could do now to a.’ter the N.Z.O.C.G.A. decision. “It is now a matter between Mr Peterson and the Fencing Association,” said Mr Temple. “We will have to sit round and talk this one out.”

While Mr Temple was prepared to believe that Mr Peterson had exercised a conscience vote, it was, nevertheless, contra,ry to the feeling of the Fencing Association.

He said he had spoken to two members of the association’s executive yesterday, and a statement would be issued after today’s expected meeting.