The Games

My name is Warwick Sykes. Although you may think of me as the local bus driver, that has only been the case for about a decade. At 83 years old I have had quite an interesting life and, if my memory is not as good as it was, I beg forgiveness.

Background

I grew up in Auckland, but at 20 I went to Christchurch for a new job and immediately fell in love with the place—as it was then.

Preamble

One of my interests was motorsport administration, an activity I am still heavily involved with. This included the 1970 Silver Fern Rally and many others.

The Games

Once the Games had been awarded to Christchurch, plans were afoot to have athletics at Lancaster Park—sadly since deconstructed—and swimming at Centennial Pool.

A quite innovative athletics and pool complex was promoted and, after winning the local-body elections, the QEII complex was built in a very short space of time. Fair-form bare concrete walls and other practical decisions helped in this task.

The venues included athletics and swimming at QEII; wrestling at the newly opened Town Hall; weightlifting at the James Hay Theatre; boxing at Canterbury Court; badminton at Cowles Stadium; lawn bowls at Woolston Club; shooting at the McLeans Island range; and cycling at the Denton Park velodrome.

The athletes were all housed in the university student accommodation at Ilam. When the various committees had been set up, it appeared that half of Christchurch was involved in some way. Holden provided around 200 cars to transport officials, so there also needed to be 200 voluntary drivers. The vast majority of helpers were volunteers; I, for one, used all my annual leave.

Our involvement

As part of this citywide enthusiasm, we organised a really big car rally—Shell ’74—with cars starting in Auckland, Napier and New Plymouth, as well as Nelson, Queenstown and Invercargill. All were to arrive in Christchurch two days before the Opening Ceremony. This was indeed a huge undertaking and needed dedicated people; I was only one of many.

We had been granted associated-event status for the Games too. Then disaster: in mid-1973 the oil shock hit New Zealand, petrol was in short supply and things did not look good.

Our major sponsor, Shell Oil, quite understandably took the view that it was not a good look for an oil company to sponsor what some people might consider wasteful fuel use. They therefore arranged to cancel our event, despite what it would cost them without receiving any return.

What came next

I approached the Games organisers and asked if they wanted to use our team in any way. This was accepted immediately, particularly if they could deal with me and I would deal with the rest of the team. Done. This is how we ended up as Newsflash announcers.

Because New Zealand was—and is—a long way from the rest of the world, it was felt that overseas news organisations might send only one or two people instead of the ten or more they might otherwise send. We therefore had to babysit them: feed them the news without expecting them to go looking for it themselves.

Newsflash control

Newsflash Control was buried deep inside the concrete cavern of QEII. Our little room had landlines from each venue and four television monitors, one of which was the brand-new colour-standard CHTV3. For the entire period of the Games, CHTV3 showed nothing but the Games. It had a studio buried deep inside the complex that was subsequently to become a squash court.

We had a representative at every venue whose job was to ferret out anything of interest and report when a medal ceremony was about to start. I would either patch them through to the system or relay the information myself.

When I pushed the button, approximately 100 speakers would burst to life at various places around Christchurch, along with a further 700 telephone jackpoints into which reporters could plug headsets. The enthusiasm of the New Zealand Post Office technicians was wonderful to behold.

Just outside my door were shifts of Brownies, under the control of a Brown Owl, who delivered hard copies of news to reporters throughout the QEII complex. They must have run miles. Because I could not leave my post for the entire shift, they also ran all my errands.

The shifts

Newsflash Control had to be staffed continuously. My brother-in-law Errol and I covered three shifts each day: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.; 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.; and 8 p.m. to midnight. One of us did the morning and evening shifts one day, then the afternoon shift the next.

We both used our passes to visit other venues when we were not working. In reality, in our thirties, we each ‘worked’ from 8 a.m. until midnight for 15 days straight. But wait—there is more. From midnight until about 2 a.m. we socialised with other media staff at the Kerrs Reach rowing club pavilion.

Pronunciation

We were given a book containing competitors’ names as printed and the phonetic way to pronounce them. Personally, I found Fijian and similar names the most difficult.

Programmes

To ensure the daily programmes contained the latest fields, printers produced each new day’s programmes between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. This ensured that all the names were up to date.

Communications

It should be remembered that in 1974 there was no cellphone coverage and not much in the way of computing power either. Getting information displayed on the scoreboard required either an ASR33 teletype or an Olivetti telex machine.

The New Zealand Post Office provided two PABX telephone exchanges: the Games exchange, linking all the venues and the village with its own operator; and the QEII exchange, providing the many phones and jackpoints throughout QEII, where the reporters were mainly based.

All copper landlines—and they worked a treat. If there were problems, which were few and far between, they were promptly fixed. The Post Office staff really did put their best foot forward, both before and during the Games.

The book

Some months after the Games, the Organising Committee produced quite a good book, but unfortunately I seem to have lost mine.

What an experience this event was. In my relatively long life, it was certainly one of the highlights.

Warwick Sykes · Wazza