Associated Press

Auckland, July 7:

A crystal trophy presented by Adolf Hitler to 1,500m gold medallist Jack Lovelock at the 1936 Berlin Olympics reached New Zealand yesterday after a 69-year delay. Lovelock, who died in a New York accident in 1949, decided after his run to leave the trophy in the care of a 14-year-old boy working at the Games village. He said it was too cumbersome to carry on the long sea voyage. The boy kept the trophy, engraved with a Nazi swastika, throughout World War II but after Lovelock died it pas-sed in auction to a priv-ate collector. The bohe-mian crystal vase came up for auction this year and was bought on New Zealand’s behalf by a soft drink company. The company refused to divulge the purchase price but said it ran to tens of thousands of dollars. The trophy will be displayed at Lovelock’s old school, Timaru Boys’ High School, on New Zealand’s South Island which already houses his gold medal and an oak tree grown from a sapling also presented to Lovelock by Hitler.