No dilemma for Walker

Press, 13 August 1980, Page 36

No dilemma for Walker

By

RAY CAIRNS

Geoff Walker, the only Christchurch member' of the tiny New Zealand Olympic Games team, was not at any stage put in the dilemma of having to choose whether; to compete at Moscow. On his return to Christchurch, Walker said he was not faced with making a choice “because I was in the situation of being in a team sport If I had had an individual feeling that I should pull out, that would have meant 50 per cent of my particular team withdrawing,” he said.

A canoeist in the K2 500 m and 1000 m events — pairs racing, partnered by Alan Thompson —- Walker

said that a parallel could be drawn with the comments by Selwyn Maister, a hockey player. Before his team was withdrawn, Maister said his personal inclination would be to withdraw; his team commitment meant he could not even entertain the idea.

“That was my Hobson’s choice too,” said Walker. “The only difference was that one hockey player, say, could be replaced without a major disruption; I was half a. team.

“I was bound to attend if Alan did,” said Walker. “So if you like, the decision to attend or not was never put on me. I was simply in the situation of facing a competitive jour

of some sort, and if we had been withdrawn from Moscow, I would have been just as happy with the competition we struck at Nottingham and Duisberg.” Walker made dear that from his competitive point of view, he enjoyed being at Moscow. “The competition was there, with only the Canadians and the Norwegians absent.” Pressed for his personal views on competing, Walker -said he had, “really, no strong views one way or the other. But as a competitive sportsman, I also had the desire to compete at an Olympic Games festival. That is when the pressure is on, and I wished to experience it.”

Commenting on the size of the New Zealand “team,” Walker believed there was not the spirit which would have been generated by a big team. “I imagine that would have been entirely different,” he said. But he did say that the canoeists were not short of support. “There were about 60 New Zealanders staying at a camping ground, in a tent village, and most of them seemed to arrive at the canoeing. We were certainly aware of their support.” Of the general atmosphere in Moscow, he observed cryptically: “We saw the best of Moscow, a clinical best; but I think we certainly did not see tha true Moscow.”