Fairhall

Press, 9 November 1983, Page 54

Fairhall

When Neroli Fairhall won the archery gold medal on the windswept Murrarie range at last year’s Commonwealth Games, even the irritatingly parochial Australian media was able to forget its bias for a few hours to pay tribute to the Christchurch woman’s popular win.

She was the first paraplegic to win a Commonwealth Games gold medal, but it was as much the dramatic manner with which she fought for her success, that captured the attention.

After four days of intense concentration Fairhall approached the 30m range for her final three arrows trailing a Northern Ireland schoolgirl, Janet Yeates, by five points. Reporters and spectators squinted through binoculars as Fairhall, and Yeates, some 20m to her left, fired their three arrows. Fairhall’s three smacked unerringly into the Bcm diameter gold spot in the centre of the target. Two of Yeates’s arrows were wayward enough to allow Fairhail to make up the deficit.

There was a nervous wait while the gold was decided

on a couhtback of inner bulls (golds) scored by the pair over the four days. Fairhall had 60 and Yeates 57.

It was the coolness with which Fairhall approached those final three arrows that impressed everyone present. She was as accomplished at handling the media 30 minutes later. “I don’t know. I have never shot standing up,” was her reply when asked if she thought she had an advantage sitting in a wheelchair. She might have replied it was not easy sitting in a wheelchair for hours at a stretch not being able to walk about like other competitors to help relieve the tension of competition.