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Les Mills
Inducted in 1990
Les Mills is one of the most durable and competitive field event athletes New Zealand has had, competing in four Olympic and four Commonwealth Games between 1958 and 1972.
Sporting Category:
  • Athletics
He won the discus gold medal in Kingston in 1966 and was second in the discus in 1958 and 1970, and was second in the shot put in 1966 and third in the shot in 1970.

His best placing at an Olympics was seventh in the shot in Tokyo in 1964.

Mills was also entered in the heavyweight weightlifting in Kingston, but did not compete because of injury.

There was widespread criticism when Mills was omitted from the 1974 Commonwealth Games where, remarkably, his wife Colleen and children Phillip and Donna both competed.

He was ranked fifth in the Commonwealth in the shot at the time.

Mills later turned his energies to administration, with a career that had such diverse duties as Papua New Guinea chief executive, attaché to Grenada, village mayor in Auckland in 1990 and chef de mission at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur and 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

Also a successful businessman with a national gymnasium chain, he was mayor of Auckland from 1990 until 1998.
 

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