Former N.Z. boy to run holding Olympic torch

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 14

Former N.Z. boy to run holding Olympic torch

By JOHN HUTCHISON Los Angeles Mark Dromgoole, a Los Angeles schoolboy born in New Zealand, wrote a carefully reasoned letter to the North American manager of Air New Zealand in Los Angeles, as a result he will realise his ambition to have a part in the 1984 Olympics.

Mark, who was 13 on April 24, wrote to Mr Ross Keenan in December.

“I am told,” he wrote, “that I can run in the 1984 Olympic Torch Relay if I have a sponsor.” Then he straight forwardly put his case:

“I was born in New Zealand but live in Los Angeles now. Last year I won the Air New Zealand 10K in the under-14 division. Eightyeight per cent of the money sponsored goes to a youth organisation, and, it wuld be great advertising for Air New Zealand.” He enclosed information

about the relay, adding, “Please sponsor me and help make my dream of being part of Olympics come true.”

Mr Keenan accepted Mark’s offer. Air New Zealand will give 53000 to the foundation sponsoring the relay, which will bring the Olympic flame across the United States in a zig-zag route covering 15,000 km. Mark will run with it for a kilometre somewhere between San Diego, California, and the stadium in Los Angeles where the opening ceremonies will be held in July 28.

Mark is the son of Mr and Mrs Sydney Dromgoole, Aucklanders who moved to Ls Angeles in 1973 when Mr Dromgoole took up a fellowship at the University of California for post-doctoral pharmacological research on muscular dystrophy. He then spent seven more years in arthritis research.

and is now designing research programmes in dermatology for a California pharmaceutical company. He, too, will run in the torch relay, sponsored by his employer. Mr Dromgoole, aged 37, and Mark sometimes compete in runs of as much as. 10km, and "sometimes he beats me,” said the father.

Mrs Judy Dromgoole, is a volunteer worker for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and will serve as an aide to important visitors during the games. Mark’s sister, Sally, aged 10, has volunteered to be a gymnast in the closing ceremonies.

Mark and Sally are pupils at the Centre for Enriched Studies, a Los Angeles “magnet” school designed to attract children with special enthusiasm for learning.