The Pacific Conference Games were a quadrennial
athletics
Athletics may refer to:
Sports
* Sport of athletics, a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking
** Track and field, a sub-category of the above sport
* Athletics (physical culture), competi ...
competition, held between 1969 and 1985 and contested by
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Each of the five nations hosted an edition of the competition before its dissolution in 1985. The 1981 and 1985 events were open to athletes from all nations.
The event was proposed at the
1967 Summer Universiade in a specially scheduled meeting by Japanese national sports officials to their counterparts for the four other developed, Western nations with Pacific coasts. The intention was to hold a high level, two-day international
track and field
Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...
competition one year after each
Summer Olympic Games
The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inau ...
. It was suggested in contemporary reports that the limited invitational format was designed to exclude the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
(which had boycotted the Tokyo Summer Universiade.
The idea of a Pacific region sports competition was revived at the
Pacific Ocean Games and an
athletics competition featured at the sole edition in 1995. The games were abandoned after their first edition, however.
Pacific Ocean Games
GBR Athletics. Retrieved on 2015-01-16.
Editions
References
;Results
from Athletics Australia
International athletics competitions
Defunct athletics competitions
Recurring sporting events established in 1969
1985 disestablishments
Quadrennial sporting events
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