Figure skater disillusioned

Press, 26 July 1989, Page 28

Figure skater disillusioned

New Zealand’s top female figure skater has been forced into an early retirement because of a lack of financial support for her efforts.

Leigh-Anne Wiig, aged 18, has announced that she is withdrawing from the New Zealand team for the World championships in Italy in September. It came at a time when she was ranked ninth in the world and keen to achieve an even higher ranking. Wiig, who first represented New Zealand as a 13 year old at the world championships in

had sought support from the New Zealand Sports Foundation so she could undertake extensive training in America. She called it quits when that support was not forthcoming. She said it was the hardest decision she had ever made. “But it’s hard training when you don’t know whether you’ll have the funds to get to the event,” she said. She applied to the Sports Foundation in January but had heard nothing by May when she won her fifth consecutive national title. There was

no response to a second approach to the foundation. Wiig, who recently joined the reporting staff of a Hastings radio station, won't be turning her back on the sport which has engrossed her teen-age years — she plans to offer free coaching to members of the Napier Skating Club which has supported her throughout her career. She hopes that later she will be able to coach professionally. At last year’s world championsips in the United States,

Wiig was tenth in the figure skating, and ninth over all for figure and freeskating. Her efforts won her a Hawke’s Bay junior sportsperson of the year title and a 1987 AGC Young Achievers award which enabled her to spend several weeks under the guidance of a top coach in the United States. ' “Staying at the top has been a tough proposition requiring many hours of practice, but now my work must come firsfc’;