FORMER Kiama resident Professor John Bloomfield and Gerroa's world-class surfer Sally Fitzgibbons have been added to the prestigious Kiama Sports Honour Roll, celebrating two superb, yet varying careers.
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Bloomfield was born in 1932 and arrived in Kiama in 1939 when his father was appointed headmaster of Kiama Central School.
He was an active member of the Kiama Surf Life Saving Club and won the Australian Junior Surf Belt Championship in 1951 at Scarborough, Western Australia. He also won the NSW Surf Belt Championship in 1951, 1953 and 1955.
Bloomfield was selected as the Australian representative to Hawaii in 1953 and South Africa in 1954.
In 1960, he left Australia on a Fulbright Scholarship to undertake postgraduate studies at the University of Oregon.
In 1974, he became the foundation professor at the Department of Human Movement at the University of Western Australia.
Bloomfield became Australia's first professor specialising in sport and human movement.
In 1972, the Whitlam government commissioned him to prepare a white paper on Australian sport.
The paper, entitled Role and scope and development of recreation in Australia was influential in the case for establishing the Australian Institute of Sport in 1981.
He prepared two reports that led to the establishment of the Western Australian Department of Sport and Western Australian Institute of Sport.
In 1980, he was appointed deputy chairman of the newly established Australian Institute of Sport and in 1985 replaced Kevan Gosper as chairman, a position he held until 1989.
In 2003, Bloomfield authored the book Australia's Sporting Success: The Inside Story, the first attempt to document the development of high performance sport in Australia.
Between 1971 and 1973, he was president of the Australian Sports Medicine Federation, now Sports Medicine Australia.
He was chairman of the Western Australian Institute of Sport Advisory Board (1980-1982), Western Australian Sports Centre Trust (1986-1989) and Australian Sports Science Council (1983-1986). He has advised 12 Australian universities.
Bloomfield has authored or co-authored more than 100 national or international scientific papers and book chapters, and is the author of several major books and reports on sport.
In 1997, he was made emeritus professor at the University of Western Australia.
Since 2002, he has been honorary professor at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle.
Emeritus Professor John Bloomfield was inducted into the Sports Australia Hall of Fame in October 2007, adding to an extraordinary list of achievements over a long and varied career. He continues to be active in sport and is on many advisory committees.
It was a big day for Sally Fitzgibbons, her induction coinciding with being announced as the municipality's Young Citizen of the Year.
Her glittering surfing career needs no introduction since she burst onto the World Championship Tour, setting a record for the gaining of enough points to qualify for the WCT in the least number of events in 2008.
Her record includes six wins in the WCT.
She has finished in the top three every year and is confident of breaking through for her first world title this year.
Fitzgibbons has also become a popular media personality in her own right.
