Dunedin dental specialist Sergio Salis added to the family silverware when he won a petanque gold medal on Saturday.
Salis has won medals in rowing before but found that reaching the dais in petanque was more mentally demanding.
Salis and Branko Cvjetan (Caversham) beat club-mates Neville Frost and Phillip Lyall 13-8 in a tightly-fought plate final at the Caversham Club.
The Salis family has won national medals in rowing and athletics but this was the first in petanque.
The family keep their spoils in a bowl made by their daughters when they were at school.
Salis is also a successful rowing coach and his crews have won numerous national championship medals.
He thought his fitness level was not good enough to row at another Masters Games regatta so he chose the gentler sport.
Pressure of work has meant that Salis has only had time to play petanque casually over the past few months.
But he polished up his technique on the grass at Ida Valley during his Christmas vacation in Central Otago.
He knew he could rely on the expertise of Cvjetan, who has played the sport for 40 years.
Cvjetan, a retired carpenter, emigrated to New Zealand from Yugoslavia 40 years ago and still retains that determined aggression of the Slavic people.
The Salis team made a good start and quickly established a 5-0 lead that Frost's team was not able to peg back.
Frost was forced to play catch-up petanque after this and it was always going to be difficult.
There were some tense moments and both teams killed the end when it was running against them.
There were four dead ends in the game.
The Frost combination kept challenging and when they were only two shots behind at 10-8 the game was wide open.
Frost, normally an accurate shooter, lost his touch in the middle stages.
But he came back strongly as the scores drew closer.
On the decisive end he drew within centimetres of the jack.
The pressure forced Salis to deliver his best boule of the game and take the shot, and the lead 11-8.
The gold medal was sealed on the next end when Salis and Cvjetan drew two shots to win the game.
Sheila Cox (79) dreamed of winning a gold medal before she turns 80 in two weeks and got her wish when she teamed with Sharon Olsen to win the bowl title.
"I have won ribbons before but I desperately wanted a medal," Cox said.
"But I didn't think it would be gold."
Cox and Olsen beat the Waikouaiti pair of Susan Brown and Caryl Brake 13-2.
The open final was a walk-over with the Canterbury pair of John McLay and Tony Wilkinson trouncing the Dunedin combination of Aileen Simpson and Bev Kendall 13-0.
