Stadium name triggers battle

One of the country's biggest athletic clubs is shocked by a council overturning its naming-rights deal for a $2.2 million stadium complex.

Pakuranga Athletic Club and its charitable trust now have to return $100,000 from a deal to name the new track after masters runner and club stalwart Ron Johnson.

Manukau City Council voted this week to call it the Yvette Williams Track - after New Zealand's first female Olympic gold medallist, who also lives in Manukau.

The council, which is the majority funder of the stadium, says its pavilion can be named after Mr Johnson.

Pakuranga Athletics Charitable Trust secretary Linda Mitchell said: "We are disappointed because funding is hard to get and Ron is a fantastic sponsor and as a competing athlete at 77, he is an inspiration to the club."

The Pakuranga Community Board, which had its recommendation overturned, refuses to accept the decision.

Chairman Ross Warren said Yvette Williams would have been suitably honoured by naming the pavilion after her and placing plaques by the long jump marking her gold-medal and world-record jumps.

Mayor Len Brown has come under fire for voting with six other councillors in favour of the name Yvette Williams Track.

"How can the mayor preach to Parliament a vision for empowering communities when in fact the council practises quite the opposite?" said councillor Daniel Newman.

Councillor Dick Quax, a former Olympic silver medallist, said he voted for the track to be named after Mr Johnson. "It was supported by all the parties but the council policy and activities committee turned it the other way round.

"I found the whole discussion distasteful because these are two fine people and it was unseemly to be discussing them in public."

Fellow councillor Sir John Walker, an Olympic gold medallist, supported the name Yvette Williams Track.

Yvette Corlett (nee Williams) said yesterday from her Howick home that she was proud the track would be named after her.

"I am happy to be remembered after this long time," she said. "But I hope they won't lose funding because of the possible withdrawal.

"When there was some controversy, I mentioned that I didn't want to cause any problems and didn't mind whether the track or pavilion was named after me."

The gold medallist at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics recalled how she and friends formed the club in the 1960s and how mothers made athletic blouses out of red satin for the girls and the boys had white singlets dyed red.

She was the club's first treasurer and coach and her four children also went to the club.