“TAKE COOKS AND FOOD”

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1931, Page 7

“TAKE COOKS AND FOOD”

ADVICE FOR OLYMPIC TEAM. FINE LOS ANGELES STADIUM. “If New Zealand sends a team to the Olympic Games at Los Angele*, they should take their own cooks and their own food with them,” said Mr. W. (Bill) Hunt, a well-known Australian attlete and holder of the half-mile record for the Commonwealth, who arrived in Auckland on Friday oh his way to Sydney. It is said that an army ’marches on its stomach,” and it is just as true that for an athlete to give of his best he should have the food and the cooking to which. he had been accustomed. The importance of the culinary subject, which is often lightly disregarded where athletes are concerned, is stressed by Mr. Hunt. In America, he said, no team, whether it was of footballers or of other athletes, would travel without its own water, its own food and its own cooks. “I think that any team sent from here or from anywhere else ought to follow this' example,” he eaid. Mr. Hunt travelled all over America on business, and he was interested, on going to Los Angeles, to see the stadium where the Olympic Games are to be held. “The track is perfect,” he said, “and no expense has been spared. It is a cinder track —and, by the way, because it is of cinder, it would be a good thing for anyone used to running on grass to go over a couple of months early, so as to get used to the track.” The athletic world of America was as keen as mustard on the games. All those athletes who had any chance were going to California to train and to rest. Simpson, the runner who was here a little while ago, was there. “The Americans think that they will ‘clean up’ everything this year,” Mr. Hunt said. It was the football that kept up the interest in athletics in America'. There would be a gate "of anything between 60,000 and 120,000 at' a popular match, and from three' to four dollar* would be charged a head. ' Thus the athletic world was not short of money. Mr. Hunt has retired from athletics. With him' it has' become a matter of business first. He was in New Zealand in 1928 with the New South Wales team. At one meeting in Sydney, the Dunn Shield meeting for inter-club supremacy, Mr. Hunt won all the sprint events, and the middle distance as well. The ,100yds he did in 10 l-ss. His halfmile record is 1.55 2-5.