WOMAN ATHLETE

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 156, 28 March 1939, Page 11

WOMAN ATHLETE

Miss Decima Norman’s Tour Ended

Dominion Special Service. AUCKLAND, March 27.

Well satisfied with her performances in New Zealand, Miss Decima Norman, the West Australian athlete, left Auckland this evening to join the Awatea in Wellington. Though Miss Norman’s home is in Perth, she is going only as far as Sydney, where she is to enter into business. She intends to have six months’ rest from athletics.

Considering the condition of the tracks she has run on and the times she has recorded, the visitor thinks her running is as good as when she burst into the Empire Games limelight in February, 1938, by winning the 100 yards, 220 yards and the broad jump titles. The tracks in Morrinsville, Paeroa and Otahuhu were favourably commented upon by the visitor, but Carlaw Park she said was poor as a ground for athletic sports. The Australian tracks were harder and faster than those she ran on in the Auckland province. “I still hope to improve my running,” said Miss Norman this morning, “and I think my Sydney trainer, Pat Walsh, who prepared Jimmy Carlton and other champions, will effect an improvement on my style in the running of a race, but it will be six months before I start getting into form again. I need a rest.

“Then I will get ready for the Australian championships early in 1940, which are a preliminary for the Olympic Games selection. This is my first trip out of Australia. Naturally, I have hopes of being included in the Australian team for Finland, but that all depends on my form next year.”

Miss Norman mentioned that Doreen Lumley had made a remarkable improvement since the pair last met at the Empire Games. There were a number of other New Zealand women athletes of promise who would do better with improved training, she added. Mrs. M. Magee, secretary of the Australian Women’s Amateur Athletic Union, who acted as chaperon, will accompany Miss Norman to Sydney. She mentioned that women control athletics for their sex in Australia and the whole of the executive, of which she is secretary, are women.