Peter Belliss was born in 1951 and attended Wanganui Boys\u2019 College (now Whanganui City College).<\/p>\n
The Aramaho Bowling Club was established in 1956, when Belliss was 5, and it was built behind his parents\u2019 property.<\/p>\n
Belliss played his first tournament when he was 8.<\/p>\n
He said the physical convenience of the club and the fact that his parents played bowls were big factors in getting involved.<\/p>\n
While he was a handy rugby player, cricketer and rower, Belliss suffered an injury to his knee, which inspired him to prioritise bowls instead.<\/p>\n
He started playing bowls competitively in the 1969-70 season when he was 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always going to play bowls … I just got hooked once I started playing competitively,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came naturally to me. If you are good at something, it helps, but you\u2019ve still got to work hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite experiencing national success in the late 1970s, Belliss said winning the 1981 national singles title was the \u201cbreakthrough\u201d that spurred him on to achieve higher accolades.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, playing for New Zealand was one of the goals; being the world champion was also one of the goals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started playing internationally, it was the start of the journey. For some players, it is the end of their journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1982, he became New Zealand\u2019s first professional lawn bowler after collecting bronze at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games.<\/p>\n
He went on to represent New Zealand more than 40 times.<\/p>\n
Peter Belliss has remained a prominent figure in the Bowls Whanganui scene.<\/p>\n
His notable gold medal victories in the World Outdoor Bowls Championships include the 1984 men\u2019s singles title in Aberdeen, the 1988 men\u2019s doubles title with Rowan Brassey in Auckland and the men\u2019s triples in Johannesburg in 2000, with Brassey and Andrew Curtain.<\/p>\n
He won medals at two Commonwealth Games and six Asia Pacific Bowls Championships, winning four golds.<\/p>\n
Belliss said it was difficult to choose his most memorable moment in the sport because all three of the world title victories were special for different reasons.<\/p>\n
His first world title was special because he had to adapt to the slower greens in the Northern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was generally regarded that no one in the Southern Hemisphere could win in the Northern Hemisphere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t understand how our best players would go up there and get flogged but [when] you go up there and try it, you realise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to relearn the game if I wanted to be successful internationally. I didn\u2019t want to just be an international player; I wanted to be a successful international player.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was also special because he had visualised beating Scottish player Willie Wood in the final after losing to him in 1982.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething I used to visualise was that we\u2019d be 20-all and I\u2019d have to play my backhand bowl, which was the weakest of my shots, to win the game, and that was exactly what happened,\u201d Belliss said.<\/p>\n
Belliss was named Whanganui sportsperson of the year in 1981, 1982 and 1983 \u2013 ironically becoming ineligible the following year when he became world champion because there was a rule that no one could win more than three total.<\/p>\n
In the 1988 Queen\u2019s Birthday Honours, Belliss was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to bowls.<\/p>\n
After he retired as a professional player, he became assistant coach for the Blackjacks Bowls NZ national team at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and became head coach in 2019.<\/p>\n
Other Kiwis inducted into the World Bowls Hall of Fame are Rowan Brassey, Jo Edwards, Sharon Sims and Val Smith.<\/p>\n
Belliss said it was great to be in good company but there were others he thought were unlucky to miss out, such as Elsie Wilkie, Shannon McIlroy, Harry Wilson, Russell Meyer and his triples title win teammate Andrew Curtain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the start, and no doubt that those others, at some stage, will be there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Belliss believes New Zealand bowls needs more investment to compete with the dominance of Australia in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s come about purely through the money that is in sport in Australia \u2013 and that comes through their clubs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During his time in Australia, he noticed there were strong school programmes which allowed players to devote time to practising.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we might have half a dozen players who we think are pretty good, Australia will have 200 at that level so, consequently, they\u2019ll continue to dominate.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the global game, Belliss said the push to get bowls played at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics would be \u201cabsolutely huge for the sport\u201d if it materialised.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, Belliss is an ambassador for Bowls Whanganui and regularly plays after retiring several years ago.<\/p>\n
Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peter Belliss was born in 1951 and attended Wanganui Boys\u2019 College (now Whanganui City College). The Aramaho Bowling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85410,85412,1320,39275,57236,76912,85411,1019,296,85414,10005,1362,111,139,69,1118,5413,9617,2081,213,85413,21083,377],"class_list":["post-121652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-belliss","tag-bowls","tag-coach","tag-fame","tag-hall","tag-inaugural","tag-inducted","tag-international","tag-into","tag-lawn","tag-list","tag-made","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-peter","tag-player","tag-raised","tag-sports","tag-whanganuiborn","tag-whanganuis","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}