ATHLETICS

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 271, 13 November 1909, Page 16

ATHLETICS

Auckland will have the control of the next New Zealand Amateur Championship*, and, according to a Southern writer, the Canterbury centre is sure to be strongly represented, considering the success which attended its team at Dunedin. An appeal for amateurism was made at the annual meeting of the Otago Caledonian Society. Speaking to the motion for the adoption of the report, Mr. J. Brown said their sports were taking a trend towards a huge professional gathering. Professionalism ate like canker into the heart of sport. It was made a business of. What the Society should do was to encourage the love of athletics, which was innate in the human breast. Their own sons did not enter the competitions, because it wae a professional gathering. Ho would be in favour of running the risk of put-

ting a stop to the existing system, and making it purely an amateur gathering. The public did not support the gathering as well as it might be sup ported. Their officers had to go round, hat in hand, in order to prevent the gathering from resulting in a loss. By abolishing professionalism they would be fostering the health and the interests of their own lads. Let the Society see that their sons' muscles were developed, and they would be doing a vast amount of good in their own city." Several other speakers endorsed these remarks, and the motion was carried. The Earl or Carrick, distributing the prizes at a regatta at Bourne End recently, said they had heard and read a good deal about England losing her supremacy in sport—on the river, yachting, polo, and everything else. They had seen on the river this year a cup taken away by Belgium, and a yachting cup had been lifted by America, and they were not likely to get it back. The- polo cup had also gone to America. But as real sportsmen they did not trouble much about these things. The sport they had seen on the Thames was legitimate sport; the other was a sort of regular business affair. As long as in England and among Englshinen they had the genuine sport on the river and in the field that they had had in the past, they did not trouble about the lifting of a few cups by foreigners. C. E. Hoi way, the American sprinter, ■who recently defeated A. B. Postle, wa.s born at Attleboro, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on April 19, 18S5, and has only been running four years, having gone on steadily improving. Opportunities for the professional runner are comparatively rare in the United States, and after running a few matches over there Holway realised that he mast go to England, where he has made a great name for himself. R. E. Walker, the South African ohampion sprinter, competed at an international meeting at Berlin on September 12th, and he won the 100 metres handicap after ;i very close finish from Kikoler, Hip {imp being telegraphed to the London papers lo have heen lOsec, but it was probably llsee. He also annexed the 100 metres 6cra>tch race in 10 4-5 sec, whidh equals the Olympic record.