The 1979 South Pacific Games, held at Suva in Fiji from 28 August to 8 September 1979, was the sixth edition of the

South Pacific Games The Pacific Games (French: Jeux du Pacifique), is a continental multi-sport event held every four years among athletes from Oceania. The inaugural Games took place in 1963 in Suva, Fiji, and most recently in 2019 in Apia, Samoa. The Games wer ...

Participating countries

Nineteen Pacific nations or territories attended:

Sports

There were 18 sports contested at the 1979 South Pacific Games:

Note: A number in parentheses indicates how many medal events were contested in that sport (where known).

Final medal table

New Caledonia topped the table again:

Notes

For the 1979 Games, 19 countries and a projected 2,672 athletes took part. Eighteen sports as reported in ''

Pacific Islands Monthly ''Pacific Islands Monthly'', commonly referred to as "PIM", was a magazine founded in 1930 in Sydney by New Zealand born journalist R.W. Robson. Background ''Pacific Islands Monthly'' was started in Sydney in 1930. The first issue ran in August ...

''. The newly introduced sports were: cricket, hockey, lawn bowls, and squash. Netball: In ''Pacific Islands Monthly'' (PIM), it was reported that "Papua New Guinea took the bronze" in the 1979 netball competition, behind Fiji and Cook Islands. However, a few pages later in PIM's results for the netball, Tonga is listed as finishing in third place. Swimming: There were either 24 or 23 events on the programme, depending on whether the men's 4 × 200 m freestyle relay was contested and officially included in the medals. A publication from Guam's ''Political Status Education Coordinating Commission'' claims that Guam swimmer Hollis Kimbrough, "won a record seven medals in the '79 SPG alone", and as such, the ''Pacific Islands Monthly'' results could be incomplete as only four medals are listed for Kimbrough there plus two men's relay medals for Guam – and the men's 4 × 200 is omitted. Table tennis: There were seven events on the programme (or perhaps only six or five, depending on whether the respective team competitions for men and women were played and medals officially awarded). The five events for table tennis in the list of results from the November 1979 issue of ''Pacific Islands Monthly'' (PIM) are the mixed doubles, men's and women's singles and doubles. PIM reported earlier in the same issue that Fiji had won the women's team event (as well as the women's doubles), but neither women's or men's team events appear in the PIM results. Weightlifting: Ten men's weight divisions were contested, with one medal event only per division (for the maximum total lift of snatch + clean-and-jerk).

References

Sources

* * {{Pacific Games Pacific Games by year

Pacific Games The Pacific Games (French: Jeux du Pacifique), is a continental multi-sport event held every four years among athletes from Oceania. The inaugural Games took place in 1963 in Suva, Fiji, and most recently in 2019 in Apia, Samoa. The Games wer ...