CYCLING NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1899, Page 6

CYCLING NOTES.

The Auckland Cycling Club's sports at the Exhibition on Saturday night were very well attended. The most noticeable feature of the racing was th success of the back markers, who figured among the jilaced men iv every race. E. Reynolds started 10 yards behind scratch in the half mile, but was nevertheless the first to pass the winning post. His victory was a popular one. K. A. Dexter from scratch secured third place in both j the half mile and the two mile. J. Crozier, another scratch man, scored his first victory as a Laague amateur in the mile, and ran into third place in the half mile. (!. Hyauiason, on the 10 yards mark in the half mile, got second place to Reynolds in the final, and won his heat of the two mile in good style. The second heat of the two mile •was a good race. Dexter and Graham, the back markers, caught j the field at the end of a -mile, and a j big spurt landed Graham at the head of affairs. Dexter meanwhile kept to the rear, but in the last lap he challenged Graham and a big struggle ( ensued, the Litter getting the best of j a close finish. On his form in this j race Graham .looked like winning the j final; but I fancy the big smash-up at the home-turn interfered with him, though he escaped a spill. Considering the number of collisions that have occurred of late, it seems to me the committee should not allow more than six riders on the track at once; eight is evidently too many for safety. W. J. O'Dowd was the most successful of the League Amateurs on Saturday, winning the half mile and coming second in the mile. In the former race O'Dowd was next to the limit, and going to the front early in the race was never headed; but in the mile victory was snatched from him by J. Crozier, who came with a strong spurt at the finish and got ahead a few yards from home. It •was a good race. Among others who rode well on Saturday were J. W. Irvin and J. B. O'Sulliva.i, who secured first and second places respectively in the final of the two mile. Entries for the Thames Cycling Club's sports close this evening at the Metropolitan Hotel. The sports will be held on February 18th, an excursion steamer leaving Auckland at 7.30 that morning. The N.C.U. made a plucky but hopeless attempt which it is said has cost them a 'cool thou.' to compel the railway companies to carry cycles as personal luggage. Neither clubs nor individual cyclists responded to the call for subscriptions as they might have been expected to, seeing that proceedings were entirely in their interests. I fancy that the fight was looked on from the start as a walk over for the great monopolists. Some very nice arguments relative to racing skiffs 40 feet long-,, horses, gigs, and so forth, ■were urged as the consequence of admitting cycles free. Eventually Mr Justice Channel! determined that a cycle did not come within the requirements of personal luggage, viz. (1) for personal use in connection with the journey; (2) in connection with the journey; (3) habitually taken by the passenger not merely for the jonrney, but during absence from home. The N.C.U. has determined not to appeal, and the managers of railway companies have for the present declined to make concessions. Doubtless there is a good deal to be said on both sides of the question. Yesterday (says the 'Oamaru Mail' of a recent date) as G. Sutherland, the noted bicyclist, who came to Oamaru to compete attheclub'sbicycle sports, was travelling on his machine along the North Eoad footpath to escape a flock of sheep, an equally notable politician, presumably annoyed because he was travelling on the footpath, pushed.his umbrella amongst the. spokes and brough down the rider. Tha machine was badly damaged, and . the cyclist, not in the best of tempers, which will be readily understandable, especially if it be true that he fell anto the ditch, rose and cuffed the politician. It is just as well that the public should know that no one is ■warranted in interfering with the progress of a bicyclist along the public highway. It has been decided here and elsewhere that even a policeman cannot legally stop a bicyclist by any such means as that which was used in Sutherland's case.

Lesna, the French crack, with two petroleum tandems, is expected to arrive in Australia this month. He intends going for paced records, and willcompete in paced matches, and if unsuccessful in securing this end, he •will devote his time to handicap racing". Lesna visited Australia in 1897, and at that time broke all Australian records up to the hour. Bourillon, the French champion, attributes his many successes to his strict attention to one thing, and one thing- only, that is, instead of competing' in races at many distances he confines his sole attention to sprint racing. The N.C.U. has been doing good work in the way of arbitrating. A northern centre recently settled without litigation the claim of a cyclist against the Grangetown Cycling Grounds proprietorship for damages sustained while training from the kick of a horse, which got on the track .through a breakage in the fence.

1 The Union also appealed, but unsuccessfully, to Lord Egerton of Ta.tton, who has prohibited his tenants in the pretty village of Rosthern, in Cheshire, from supplying tea to cyclists. The only reply from thia haughty peer was that the 'interference was uncalled for.' The despotic and arbitrary rule of some of these lords of the soil makes the blood of a cyclist used to free colonial ways boil. So far I have not seen that anyone has taken up the case of the butcher Hichman, whose treatment was a scandal in the administration of justice. He was cycling on a Warwickshire road, when the foxhounds of Lord "Willoughby de Broke came along in full cry. Desiring to avoid them he pedalled at his best pace so as to pass

a gap in the hedge before the hounds broke through. Unforhmately the dogs followed him instead of the fox. Lord Willoughby and his son, infuriated that the pack had been drawn from their scent, galloped after the butcher, swore at him, dragged him off his bicycle, hurt his leg and damaged the ypokes of his machine. As he not unnaturally declined to give his name to these rough boors a policeman was sent for, and lie was given into custody. Lord Willoughby"s brother magistrates thought the offence of 'furious riding' fully proved and fined the butcher £?>. He sued his assailants for assault and the judge thought 'sixpence without costs' a fair compensation for the treatment to which he had been subjected! With lords and county gentry the fox evidently gets a better run for his money than the cyclist. Clearly a case of 'Fox et praeterea Xihil."

Our London correspondent writes

Despite the extraordinary mild weather. December is somewhat of a close season for cyclists, so {here is little startling- to chronicle. In the present slushy state of the streets, one rides with one's life in one's liantls —I should say feet, and in consequence such paragraphs as this are not. infrequent

As a cyclist was riding from Wellington street into the Strand, his machine skidded and threw the rider, a man about 20 years of age. under an omnibus. The wheels passed over his neck.' The conscientious chronicler of the fatality concludes: 'He was taken to King's College Hospital, but "on arrival was found to be dead." ')

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Common Council both look upon the scorcher as a 'social pest.' The former has issued a caution warningcyclists that bicycles, tricycles, and velocipedes (who rides a velocipede nowadays?) are carriages, and must carry a lamp at night, and their riders when 'approaching' any vehicle or foot-passenger must sound a bell or whistle. The Commissioner is rather astray in his law, as the Statute makes the warning compulsory not on "approaching' but on 'overtaking.' a very different' matter. Although the bylaws making lighting compulsory have been in force for a couple of months now, the cyclist seems to be the only victim of the police. Buses, drays, vans, and waggons still rumble along darkling, or carry one dim antediluvian lantern that would have disgraced the Commissioners 'velocipede.' Those iiseful organisations, the N.C.U. and the C.T.C. celebrate their 21st birthdays next year, and the 'whirligig of time' maj* be expected to revolve quicker than ever. The X.C.U. intends to adopt a hotel scheme on the basis of a percentage reduction to members of the Union and a scheme of insurance for its ordinary private members, by which each will be entitled to a payment of £1 per week for five weeks'in case of disablement by a cycle accident, and his relatives to £50 in case of his death from the same cause. All this for 3/(3 a year.

Talking of insurance reminds me that it has been recently pointed out that the ordinary fire policy on one's goods and chattels does not cover cycles, and that therefore wheelmen should see that their machines are specially included in their policies. The man who smokes whilst cycling is a waster of tobacco, and can derive no pleasure from the practice, unless he ambles along at no greater pace than five miles an hour. Only recently an English rider croppered whilst, smoking a pipe, and tie stem caused such injuries to the back of his mouth that he died almost immediately. Moral: Take one pleasure at a time.

The County of London by-law making the carrying of lights on vehicles compulsory, which came into operation on the Ist of October, is being enforced. Even Egypt has for many years had a system of compulsory lighting. Gradually the various local 1 authorities throughout the country! are falling into line, but the regulations vary a good deal. What is wanted is a Lighting Act of Parliament that shall be simple and uniform throughout th e United Kingdom. Every cyclist musT;. have felt after colliding with a dog, or narrowly escaping that catastrophe, that he was hardly equal to doing justice in words to his feelings. One does occasionally hear fairly compr.ehenftiive objurgations addressed to curs, but they are chiefly couched in language that-a self-respecting -wheelman would not j care to adopt. What is needed is some ] all-embracing form of word which will o-ire ease to his perturbed bosom without imperilling his immortal soul. We are glad to have come across such a form, not, indeed, in a cycling journal, but in the 'Cornhill Magazine,' in the pseudo-antiquated 'Etehingham Letters.' It is narrated therein that some students were a-cycling, when a large and fat dog obtruded his person across their course. Results as usual. This memorable curse was composed by the chief victim, who, visiting the scene again in a few days' time, found that, while he was himself a good deal the worse for wear, the obstructive canine was as chubby, as cheerful, and as obstructive to wheelmen as before. Thereupon the student hied him to his chamber and set down in dog-Latin the following curse: — 'Here beginneth the excommunication of the dog. 'Cursed be this dog of infinite wickedness who upset our scholar from his , wheel. 'Cursed be he with all evil dogs I .which have been cursed from the beginning of the world. 'Cursed be he with the dogs of i Samaria which ate the body of Queen ! Jezebel. 'Cursed be he with the barking god Anubis, and all other dog-headed devils that ever barked in Egypt. 'May all the blessings earned by good dogs in heaven or earth be far from him. 'Let him in no wise see the age of Argus, nor walk with angels like Tobit's dog. 'Cursed be he by the heavenly dogs Sirius and Procyon, and by the hunting dogs. 'Cursed be he with n, three-fold curse by the hell-hound Cerberus and his three heads. 'Cursed be he before our lady the Queen, and before the County Council, a.nd "by all and every the muzzling orders.'

And so on for a good half column