Sharp eye saw wide range of shooting wins
A funeral will be held in Havelock North on Monday for Maurie Gordon, who was one of the most successful competitors in New Zealand rifle shooting history.
His major triumphs in more than 20 years representing New Zealand were winning the 1974 Christchurch Commonwealth Games fullbore rifle shooting gold medal and in 1976 the St George Aggregate at Bisley in England, still the only New Zealander to have won the event.
But in a career of more than 60 years’ consecutive appearances at the National Rifle Association championships at Trentham, he won the coveted Ballinger Belt three times, emulating the feat of Pvt Arthur Ballinger, after whom the belt was named when he gifted the country’s oldest sports trophy back to the NRA following his third win, in 1907.
Too young to have gone to war, Mr Gordon’s first Ballinger Belt win came as a 24-year-old in 1951, up against large number of crack-shot veterans of the 1939-1945 conflict. Representing the Okawa Rifle Club throughout his career, he won the title again in 1953, and finally 1970, the last to be won with a .303 rifle — his “old faithful” says son, fellow rifleman and career policeman Bob Gordon.
Maurie Gordon was also four-times runner-up in the Ballinger Belt, decided in the Queen’s 50 shoot at the end of the championships each January, having followed father George into the championships when they resumed in 1947. With Bob Gordon having competed every year since 1972, with a best effort of 17th overall and B Grade championship Dobson Belt winner in 2012, the NRA career of the three generations has spanned 70 years, consecutively.
He was also sixth in the fullbore shooting at the 1966 Empire Games in Kingston, Jamaica, and at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Canada, and possibly would also have shot at the 1970 games in Edinburgh had rifle shooting been on the programme.
His achievements were widely recognised, with life membership of the NRA, a Hawke’s Bay Sportsman of the Year title after the games win in 1974, a Hawke’s Bay Sportsman of the Decade for the 1970s, and induction to the Hawke’s Bay Sports Hall of Fame.
Mr Gordon was born in Napier, the second of six children of butcher George and wife Molly, and went to Napier Central and Napier Intermediate schools.
He left school at the age of 13, by which he was already a well-performed smallbore rifle shooter, reputably adept at knocking out berries and acorns, and lighting wax matches with glancing shots as they rested on fence posts. He had started smallbore shooting on a range under a now long-gone grandstand at McLean Park.
He also became involved in the beekeeping operation his father started with the family’s move to Riverslea Rd, Hastings.
In 1948 he married Cynthia Weekes, who had come from the West Coast as a teenager with her family to live in Hastings, and they raised three children. Mr Gordon ran the beekeeping business for several years after his father died in 1977, and retired in 1984.
Mrs Gordon died in 1993, and Mr Gordon continued rifle shooting, and playing bowls and golf, until well into his 80s before the gradual failure of his eyesight, which as well as being a part of the makeup of a champion rifleman also made him a more than competent lead on the rinks and a formidable putter on the green.
A particular moment being recalled this week was being instructed to sit next to the Queen at a banquet on the Royal Yacht Britannia in Lyttelton Harbour during the 1974 games, with the Duke of Edinburgh sitting opposite with track and field thrower Valerie Young.
His death at Mary Doyle Complex having come just eight days after that of fellow Hawke’s Bay Ballinger Belt winner Roly Cammock, of Waipukurau, Mr Gordon is survived by son Bob, daughters Daisy Wolff and Robyn Brannigan, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
The funeral will be held at the Havelock North Function Centre on Monday starting at 11am.