Allan Potts
Passion IS a word many use in sport but Allan Potts actually lived and breathed it.
The godfather of Hawke's Bay/Poverty Bay athletics lost his battle with bone cancer on Thursday last week, aged 79.
His funeral is at the Sacred Heart Church, Hastings, today from 11am.
"He would pick them [school children] up if they couldn't make it to training and then drop them at home after training," Hastings Athletics Club chairwoman Sharee Jones said last night.
If the youngsters couldn't make it to the track, then Potts had no qualms about visiting them at home.
"He would mark out courses at someone's orchard or down the road [from their home]," Jones revealed of the former New Zealand athlete, coach and administrator.
Among the stable of elite athletes Potts coached are Rex Wilson, Michelle Green, Briar Toop, Phil Costley, Howard Healey, Hamish Christensen, Matthew Holder, Neville Smith, Andrew Peskett, Gareth Hyett, Andrea Williams, Michael O'Connor, Peter Maulder, Kirsty Turnbull, Neil Sargisson, Yvonne Timmer, Heather Marsters, sons Richard and Nicholas Potts, Richard Tayler, Nola Bond and hurdler Helen Pirovano.
The life member of New Zealand Athletics and Hastings Harriers Club also coached his wife, the late Sylvia Potts (nee Oxenham), to the Olympic level.
She competed at the 1968 Mexico Games and to two Commonwealth Games - Edinburgh in 1970 and Christchurch in 1974.
He also coached elder son Richard to two Commonwealth Games (1990 and 1994).
Potts was coach of the national track-and-field section at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and a national selector for two decades until 1994.
He was also president of Athletics New Zealand in 2002-03 and served on the board for eight years.
"He rarely missed an Athletics NZ AGM. He attended his last one last year in Hamilton," Jones said, revealing Richard, 42, a Bay builder, had driven him to the national track meeting last month and the crosscountry nationals.
"He loved catching up with old friends and athletes he coached over the years."
In an interview with Hawke's Bay Today in January, Potts revealed setting incremental goals to his recovery from terminal illness was imperative.
Jetting off to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in Scotland in July was on the bucket list but, with an impish grin and a wink, he also acknowledged it was seemingly a pipe dream.
"The airline and immigration authorities in Scotland will never let me in and I don't think it's fair on them," he had said.
Son Nicholas, 35, was in the Bay for five weeks, visiting him at the hospital and celebrated Christmas before returning to his Scottish wife, Shona, and his stepson, Lewis, 9, in Glasgow.
"He [Allan] still would have gone to Glasgow if he had had a chance," Jones said with laugh.
She said Potts was a little fixed in his ways.
"He was very old school but he wound down in the past few years," she said of Potts who relaxed his philosophy of not coaching children under 12 with the impending success of the Colgate Games.
Potts had coached Iona College pupils religiously on Wednesday nights for the past six years.
"He rarely missed a training. It was pretty much seven days a week until he got unwell."
The Hastings club has about 200 members who are predominantly young.
"If there were any questions on athletics about training or running a meet Allan knew all the answers," Jones said of Potts who was awarded an ONZM with Sylvia in 1998, a year before she died.
It was hard to miss Allan Potts at athletics and crosscountry events in Hawke's Bay.
"We had the school relays at Andersen Park [Havelock North] today and for the first time he wasn't there," Murray Andersen, who is a fellow athletics (field, multi-event) coach, said last night.
"I'd always look up and see him sitting in a golf chair," said Andersen, who, with the help of his daughters, keeps times on athletes in the Bay.
He pointed out a crosscountry event was scheduled at the Hawke's Bay Showgrounds in Hastings this Saturday and Potts, who lost his battle with bone cancer on Thursday last week, will be a notable omission there, too.
Potts, in conjunction with the Oxenham family (his in-laws), helped set up a trust fund to ensure the annual Sylvia Potts Memorial Classic was staged for 15 years to honour his wife, a former Olympian, who succumbed to cancer in 1999.
The trust donates $1000 every year to the HB Cancer Society, as well as any money collected from gold coin donations at the gate.
It was befitting that Angie Smit, 22, of Canterbury, clocked 2min 03.72sec at the classic in January, eclipsing the mark of 2:04.08 the late Sylvia Potts had set in 800m.
"It just shows she's running very well, although it took her five years to do it," a wheelchair-bound Potts had remarked on Smit, who put her prizemoney towards marrying her English fiance and sprinter Sam Petty on December 13.
Andersen said Potts was passionate about his athletes, following their pursuits even if they played other codes, such as netball. "When I coached, Pottsy was there most nights. He coached them from the time they were kids up to the elite level."
His passion extended to ensuring the move from the defunct Nelson Park to the HB Regional Sports Park was in the best interests of athletics.
"I was involved in that with him and he never stood in the way of progress." Andersen said of Potts, who was equally passionate at club meetings and loved horse racing.