Tuna to speak at event

The National Sports

SOUTH Pacific Games gold medalist and Papua New Guinean hall of fame inductee Takale Tuna is set to be a guest speaker at the 28th SP Sports Awards (SPSA) presentation night in Port Moresby on May 29.
This will be the first time for a local sports hero to feature as the guest speaker at the awards.
“The SPSA organising committee is delighted to invite a local talent this time, to address our live audience on EMTV and social media,” SPSA chairman Nancy Gah said in a statement last week.
“Tuna was a track and field star back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He made an impact in sports in PNG thus he is a fitting candidate to be the guest speaker.”
Tuna was a top sprinter who won 13 national titles, six gold and three silver at the South Pacific Games throughout his athletics career.
His first success was at the 1987 South Pacific Games in Noumea, New Caledonia, where he won silver in the 100m and gold in the 200m and 400m events — these were Team PNG athletics’ only gold at the Games.
Tuna’s second medal was at the 1991 South Pacific Games in Port Moresby, where he produced more great results on home soil, winning three gold (200m, 4x100m, 4x400m) and two silver (100m, 400m).
His sensational record time of three minutes, 9.55 seconds, ran by the 4x400m relay team, was and still is a Pacific Games record and was a qualifying time for the 1992 Olympic Games.
Their performance broke the national record, the PNG all-comers and Pacific Islands best performance time.
In 1988, Tuna was given the opportunity to be the third Olympic flag bearer for Team PNG at the Seoul Olympic Games where he competed in the 200m and 400m events, advancing to the quarterfinals in the 400m event.
Tuna is ranked fourth on the PNG all-time best list for the 100m with his time of 10.60s, second for the 200m with his time of 21.18s —which was the national record for 20 years — and sixth for the 400m event with his time of 47.24s.
He held the national records for the 100m (broken by Ezekiel Wartovo in 1990), 200m (broken by Nelson Stone in 2015) and the 400m (broken by Subul Babo in 1991).