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When the 1400 competitors and officials arrive in Christchurch to take part in the World Games for the Deaf, TVNZ's news programme for the deaf will be ready and waiting. The small staff of the weekly programme "News Review" is being boosted by four journalists to cover the events of the three-week games in January.

Noel Coventry is a 22-year-old deaf athlete and the sole New Zealand representative going to the Deaf Olympics in Yugoslavia. Club officials would drop a handkerchief for him to sight as a sign that the starting gun had been fired.

Kath Smith, selected as chaperon for the first official team to represent New Zealand at the International Games for the Deaf, is being fitted with the ceremonial team outfit.

The team of 17 deaf athletes are farewelled at Kelston School for the Deaf, with official team photos, before leaving for the 10th International Games for the Deaf at Washington D.C.

Coventry was selected as a sole member of the New Zealand team to attend the July Deaf Olympics in Yugoslavia.

About 100 interpreters have been trained in Christchurch over the last year. The classes were organised by the hearing people but the deaf were the teachers. It is only the second time that New Zealand sign language has been taught in this country.

The New Zealand Deaf Amateur Sports Association’s annual convention in Wellington at the weekend has attracted 250 entries from New Zealand and Australia to what is fast becoming a major New Zealand sporting event.

The Games will be about the same size as the 1974 sporting extravaganza in Christchurch, the Commonwealth Games. Yet it has been orchestrated on a budget of $700,000 – about one-third of the cost of the opening ceremony planned for the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland.