Sole N.Z. entrant for Deaf Games

A deaf Auckland long distance runner, Noel Coventry, will be the sole New Zealand entrant for the Deaf Olympic Games in Yugoslavia in July.

The executive of the New Zealand Deaf Sports Association, meeting in Palmerston North today, selected Coventry from 12 nominations for the New Zealand team.

Coventry will represent New Zealand in the 5000 metres, 10,000 metres and the marathon.

The selector for the Auckland area, Mr O. B. Gibbons, said Coventry had been training with P. G. Snell and W. Baillie in Auckland.

New Zealand sent a team of 17 to the last Deaf Olympics, in Washington. The selection committee, Mr M. Ward (Christchurch), Mr O. B. Gibbons (Auckland), Mr D. D. Beech (Palmerston North), said that a large team had been sent last time because the Association had felt that the Washington venue might be the closest the Olympics came to New Zealand for some time.

The 1965 team had included a team of eight basketballers, but a basketball team was not being sent this year.

Caption under the photo: The deaf New Zealand runner Noel Coventry, and Auckland selector Mr O. B. Gibbons, inspect the stopwatch time of 32min 8.2sec which gave Coventry a place in the New Zealand team to go to the July Deaf Olympics in Yugoslavia. Coventry was selected as sole member of the New Zealand team in Palmerston North today.