Olympics: Odyssey will recall a golden day

By TERRY MADDAFORD

A friendship cemented on the victory dais at the 1952 Olympics and enduring the 50 years since, reaches it pinnacle this month.

Long jump gold medallist Yvette Corlett will join British third placegetter Shirley Berry at a reunion in Helsinki to mark the anniversary of those Games in Finland.

Corlett (nee Williams) was invited by Berry (nee Cawley) to join the British Olympians Club in their pilgrimage to the Finnish capital and was happy to accept.

This morning she will be joined by her younger brother, Roy - whose time in the sun came 14 years later as the Commonwealth Games decathlon gold medallist in Kingston, Jamaica - on a flight to London.

It will be a far cry from the labourious journey in the Solent flying boat Aranui which took the home-based members of the 1952 team to Europe via Sydney, Darwin, Singapore, Calcutta and Rome.

"The first I heard of the reunion was when Shirley wrote to me and invited me to join her," said 72-year-old Corlett, one of seven surviving members of the 15-strong New Zealand team in Helsinki.

"All other team members were invited, but I'm the only one making the trip."

Corlett would have liked Jean Hurring, who as Jean Stewart won bronze in the 100m backstroke, to accompany her. "We were both from Dunedin and knew each other through sport before we went to the Olympics, but Jean felt such a trip was beyond her."

At various times Corlett, Hurring and Hurring's late husband, Lincoln (also a member of the 1952 team), all attended Dunedin North Intermediate School.

Forty members of the British team will be in Helsinki, where Corlett will be the official New Zealand representative following approaches to the Finns by the president of New Zealand's National Olympic Committee, John Davies.

Faced with a hefty bill for the trip, Corlett, who had a heart operation eight years ago and survived a cancer scare last year, is grateful for the support from Sport Otago, and in particular Paul Allison, who raised a substantial part of the costs.

A judge for the New Zealand Herald Junior Sports Awards since their inception in 1968, Corlett will also spend a day at the Manchester Commonwealth Games with Berry.

In 1950 in Auckland, she won Empire Games gold in the long jump and silver in the javelin, and successfully defended her long jump title four years later in Vancouver, where she also won the shot put and discus.

Married to Buddy Corlett, who has suffered a stroke and cannot make this trip, Corlett did not defend her Olympic title in Melbourne in 1956 because she was expecting her first child.

While in Britain she will spend time with her youngest son Bruce and his family in Wales.