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New Zealand will have to struggle to send a team to the next World Games for the Deaf because of the huge cost of staging the 1989 event which ended at Queen Elizabeth II Park yesterday.

The 1400 officials and competitors at the World Deaf Games will be well attended by a large group of medical doctors, St John Ambulance officers, physiotherapists, podiatrists and masseurs. Drug and gender tests will also be a part of the workload.

Sixteen Wellingtonians are part of the 97 strong New Zealand team to compete in the 16th World Games for the Deaf in Christchurch. Local members of the team and the sport they are competing in are listed.

Three officials of the World Games for the Deaf pause to toast the success of the venture, as teams from more than 30 countries arrive in Christchurch.

Nearly 90 Christchurch people have spent the last year training to be interpreters at the World Games for the Deaf, with about 50 deaf people teaching the volunteers their language.

One of the crowd favourites at the sixteenth World Games for the Deaf has been the blind and deaf wrestler from Canada, Pier Morten. Although being disadvantaged by not being able to see his opponents, Morten fights tenaciously and reacts speedily to holds applied on him.

The vice-chairman of the organising committee, Mrs Margaret Coutts, said yesterday "for two weeks there will be more deaf people on the street than hearing people. My heart is filled with gold because of the very big turn out – there are more athletes here than at the previous World Games in America (in 1985)."

The result of Dick Poole's efforts was the official team photograph of the New Zealand team. The team mascot is in the centre of the front row alongside the coaches and team officials.

A full page update from The Press, on the results from the World Games for the Deaf - Saturday 14 January. Smith smashes record; Medal prospects; Basketball chance; Fast Swimming; Close tennis final.

New Zealand showed how much it has improved in the soccer tournament at the World Games for the Deaf when it took two goals in the last 5 min by Australia to beat it in the play-off for ninth place at English Park today.

New Zealand deaf sports competitors and officials must build on the successes and achievements of the 16th World Games for the Deaf which ended in Christchurch on Monday, the games committee chairman, John Macdonald, said today.

Although many people will not have heard of the World Games for the Deaf, New Zealand's involvement with them spans 40 years. The first information about the games reached New Zealand in 1949 and the New Zealand Amateur Sports Association was formed.

New Zealand's Kevin Lawrence won silver in the World Games for the Deaf marathon yesterday, but had to survive a protest.

The chairman of the Hillary Commission, Sir Ronald Scott, has joined in the chorus of criticism over television coverage of the World Games for the Deaf. He said Television New Zealand was insensitive to the needs of the deaf when covering the Games.