Athletics READ TO GO TO RUSSIA

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 13

Athletics READ TO GO TO RUSSIA

Participation In Moscow Games

(New Zealand Press Association) NEW PLYMOUTH, April 26.

Norman Read, winner of the 50kilometre walk at the Melbourne Olympics, has decided to accept an invitation to attend the Russian world youth festival games at Moscow.

Read has been in touch with the secretary of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association (Mr C. Geddes), but he will still require formal permission from the association’s next meeting before he can make the trip. The invitation was extended to Read by telephone while he was attending the Highland games at Hastings. It was subsequently confirmed by letter from the Russian Legation this week. Today Read was in telephone communication with the legation from Hawera and learned that the event in which he will compete at Moscow will be a 20-kilometre race—strictly not his distance. Russians filled the first three places in the 20-kilometre walk at Melbourne. Read expects to leave New Zealand about a week before the games start at Moscow on July 28. They conclude on August 10. He is suffering from no delusions as to the disadvantages under which he will be labouring. With the games starting towards the end of July, he could only undergo a fairly limited preparation and, although he was starting immediately on a hard training programme, it would all have to be done on his own, he said. There was the fact, too, that he had regarded the Hastings games as the end of his season. He stressed that he was not the slightest bit interested in politics or propaganda, his sole concern was to do something in the interests of sport.