Olympics: Stadium honours vision of NZ man

By EUGENE BINGHAM

A marble tablet at the impressive Panathinaiko Stadium in central Athens records the name of a New Zealander credited with playing a part in the birth of the modern Olympics.

Leonard Cuff's chance meeting with the father of the modern games, Pierre de Coubertin, led New Zealand and Australia to be enthusiastic early supporters.

Cuff, a sportsman turned administrator, won three national long-jump titles, was a top hurdler, captained the first official New Zealand cricket team and played rugby for Canterbury.

The founding secretary of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association, he was an athlete-manager on the first formal athletic team to tour Britain and France at the time he met de Coubertin in Paris in July 1892.

The pair apparently found they had common views about the value of sport to society, and kept in touch through letters, copies of which are held at the Olympic Museum of the New Zealand Olympic Committee.

When de Coubertin announced months later his intention to revive the games, Cuff was invited to join the movement and was later elected one of the 13 founding members of the International Olympic Committee. Their names are inscribed in stone at the Panathinaiko Stadium, where the first modern games were held in 1896.

Cuff moved to Tasmania in 1899, encouraging New Zealand and Australian participation in the Games. He held his position on the IOC until 1905, and in 1954 he was the last of the founding members to die.

Cuff's contribution to New Zealand sport was recognised when he was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.

The NZOC also established the Leonard Cuff Medal to be presented sparingly in honour of an outstanding record of inspirational leadership in the promotion of Olympism.

It has been presented only once, to the late John Davies.

Barry Maister, secretary-general of the NZOC, said Cuff's place in Olympic history "is highly valued by the NZOC as a leader of not just the Olympic Movement in New Zealand but worldwide".