Precious McKenzie was born in South Africa in 1936. Unfortunately he had a chest condition which he luckily survived, which is why his mother Christena called him Precious. Precious was well known in New Zealand because he was a famous weightlifter.
In his early childhood Precious's dad was eaten by a crocodile. Suddenly his mother started drinking so she gave Precious and his sister to foster homes. Sadly their foster parents didn’t feed them properly so he didn’t grow properly. He only grew to 1.45m.
Without too much effort Precious did gymnastics hoping to be in the circus. Unfortunately he couldn't be in the circus because of his colour skin. He decided to do weightlifting instead.
He won the Bantamweight title in South Africa. and wanted to play for the empire games but he wasn’t allowed because of his skin color. They even refused to select for the Olympics. In 1963 South Africa finally chose him but he refused because he didn’t want to be treated like that, and be discriminated against.
He chose to emigrate to England. He also got married to a woman called elizabeth and was lucky enough had two children. After that he came to New zealand and was on our team for weightlifting. And he won a lot of medals.
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