Sports festival venues settled

Press, 17 July 1980, Page 26

Sports festival venues settled

Venues appear to have been settled for all but three of the nine sports which will make up the inter T national sporting festival in New Zealand early next year. - , ■ ‘ . *. ■,* Sir Ronald Scott, the chairman of the Ministerial advisory committee, gave more details yesterday to the annual meeting of the New Zealand Amateur Wrestling Union in Christchurch.

The co-ordinating role for the festival has been taken over by the organising committee for the 1975 New Zealand ■ Games, based . in Christchurch. 1 •

Sir Ronald said that Auckland had been allocated table tennis and weight-lifting, Wellington would get cycling' and boxing, and the swimming and the : track and field events would be run in Christchurch.

..Three sports — wrestling, gymnastics and judo —- had yet": tp advise what" location they had decided on.

However, it seems certain that' the wrestling will be held,' in Christchurch, the venue for next January’s Pacific Invitation Games. The chairman of the N.Z.A.W.U., Mr Jack Mclnnes, said that the United States, Canada, and Australia have already accepted *.. invitations for

those Games. His union’s executive will decide on the wrestling venue for the sports extravaganza in the next day or two. . Sir Ronald said that" the idea was to “decentralise’’ the Games and the “Dunedin people” were keen'to havq the gymnastics in their city. ‘ “The whole activity "will be linked together by television as if it was all in one centre,”, he said. ;• “It will be a very large television spectacular and 98 per'cent of the ‘ spectators will be television.ones.” .". st

The .wrestling- meeting yesterday acted on. a recommendation of its executive to introduce four age-groups for boys’ wrestling with,; the appropriate weight, categories to comg in line -with the international - bbdy 4 F.LLA,

However,: to. provide for boys, light for their age the minimum weight for the second 'group was amended from 36kg to 26kg and .in the third group from 45kg to 41kg. ". ' . ~4 The first group is. ‘the “mini class” for boys aged ■lO to 13, the second, for boys aged 14 to 16, the: third for "juniors” aged from -17 to 20 (in the year of competition), and the last a “senior” group' for boys aged 19 and over.