David Leggat: Teenager has a date to join New Zealand's multi-sporting greats

Sporting multi-taskers are everywhere, but few reach the top in more than one discipline.

At the turn of the last century, Charles Fry not only played a soccer international for England (and an FA Cup final), he played 26 cricket tests, turned out for Oxford University and the Barbarians at rugby and equalled the world long jump record, then standing at 7.17m.

He was also offered the throne of Albania during a term at the League of Nations. No doubt recognising a poisoned chalice when he saw it, Fry declined, but you get the point. He was a skilled sporting allrounder.

Either side of World War II, Eric Tindall played test cricket and rugby for New Zealand, and umpired both sports at international level.

Jeff Wilson is a modern sporting marvel, 60 All Black tests, 44 tries, and New Zealand ODI appearances in his teens and his thirties.

Remember Madonna Harris who in 1988 contested the women's road cycling race at the Seoul Summer Olympics, and the cross country skiing at the Calgary Winter Games (until 1992 both Games were held in the same year).

And Les Mills who won the discus gold and shot put silver at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston Jamaica in 1966, and who was chosen for the weightlifting as well, but did not compete.

There are others, but where's this all leading? The name is Rebecca Spence, and it's a fair bet we will be hearing a lot more about her.

The 17-year-old Aucklander shows all the signs of becoming one of New Zealand's great athletic achievers.

A big call? Consider this: last month she successfully defended her world junior duathlon title in Canada; this week she won the world junior road cycling time trial in Belgium, and next month she heads for Switzerland to try to go one better than her second place last year in the world junior triathlon championships.

As she does not turn 18 until next month, Spence is eligible to contest all three junior events next year.

Here's a thought. The Halberg Award finalists traditionally are chosen from senior, or open grade competition.

If Spence completes a remarkable treble in Switzerland she must rate a royal chance of making the sports woman of the year finalists list. At the least.

* In the late 1980s, New Zealand, then at one of the high points in their cricket history, toured Australia.

Shortly before the first test at Brisbane, Australia's No 3 batsman, Dean Jones, made some unfortunate comments in a newspaper, along the lines of what he planned to do to New Zealand's great allrounder Sir Richard Hadlee in the course of the series.

Jones was a confident bloke, outspoken, often brash, but a fine batsman with a dashing style. Getting opponents' backs up was never a big issue for the Victorian.

On the morning of the test, Hadlee was munching on his breakfast when a team-mate pushed the newspaper clipping under his nose. The master bowler studied it for a while.

In that series, Jones was dismissed four times: b Hadlee 2; c Smith b Hadlee 0; c Smith by Hadlee 4; c M. Crowe b Chatfield 8.

Which just goes to show it's unwise to speak without thinking, as Jones discovered with his "terrorist" remark about South African batsman Hashim Amla in Colombo this week.

The International Cricket Council have said they don't intend to punish Jones, who has discovered his commentating options have dried up with remarkable haste. But he's had support from his old skipper Allan Border, who reckons Jones has been hurt enough for his indiscretion.

It was Border who gave Jones one of cricket's better sledges during Jones' finest innings for Australia.

On his way to 210 against India in Madras in the tied test of 1986, Jones was visibly distressed in the heat, throwing up beside the pitch.

"Mate, I can't go on. I'm just too crook," Jones told his skipper.

"Sure mate," Border replied. "And when you go back in can you ask them to send an Australian out because that's what we need here."