CASH ATHLETICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 80, 6 April 1926, Page 8

CASH ATHLETICS.

CLOSE OF SEASON,

SUMMER RACING FINISHING.

Enzed's famous track star, Phil O'Shea, had to admit defeat in two straight heats of his match race with Jack Henderson on Saturday night. The chesty veteran raced hard and well, but while the sprit was willing, the flesh was weak. The Christchurch champion was a sick man. Landed with a bout of influenza on Thursday as a parting reminder of the vagaries of the northern weather, the old track and road race champion decided that laying up was out of the question, and his determined resolve to carry on and see the season out to a finish, was part of the price a champion has to pay for the position he holds in whatever branch of sport he is supreme. The average handicap man can scratch his nomination, and only his immediate circle of followers are any the wiser. Not so, with the scratch men. With the spotlight of public attention focussed on them from start to finish, they have the added burden on their shoulders of being as vital to the success of the gathering as the overhead conditions ruling prior to the event. Scratching to them is a last resort, excusable only in a case of desperate emergency, such as, for instance, befei. Harris Horder on the occasion of his last appearance in Auckland when medical intervention alone brought about hi. withdrawal late in the programme. It was the same with O'Shea. He recognised that he had a duty to perform to both the Stadium authorities and to the public, alongside of which his position in the cycling world had to take pot luck. Although beaten, there was no disgrace under the circumstances in going under to a track rider of Henderson's calibre. The latter made an immediate impression when he came under the notice of expert followers of the wheeled sport at Blandford Park, unheralded and unsung, and in many instances overlooked in the great interest that centred round Horder and O'Shea. The young North Island Derby winner, however, soon proved himself an uncommonly promising speed merchant, and his masterly exhibition of riding on Saturday night set the seal on his prowess as a track racer fit to ride in almost any company in the world to-day. With increasing age, driving power and experience, he should worthily fill the place that O'Shea has occupied in the sport in the Antipodes for "the best part of the last twenty years.

Henderson's tactics in the first two distances of the big_ match races were very sound. Faster than his rival in a sprint, but lacking as yet the latter's Marathon like leg drive over an extended distance, the younger man was content to sit back on his machine, and let O'Shea make the pa/ce. The veteran, on the other hand, was too wily a bird to let him have it all his own way, without a struggle, and the acid test came on the back stretch in the sprint event, when O'Shea tried to steal a march on his youthful rival. If Henderson had lingered there, he would probably have lost the race, but he proved himself alive to O'Shea's every move, and by hanging on to the champion's back wheel till the straight was reached, he let O'Shea force the pace till the opportune moment when he could smother the latter's finishing effort with his own greater reserve of pace. O'Shea, too, it was who had to make the pace in the half mile event, a long sprint in the last lap taking the steam out of him when it came to a show-down in the last fifty yards.

The manner in which Flewellyn Tan away with the first heat of the open mile handicap in the fastest time of the four preliminaries made him a red-hot favourite for the final, but handicapper Lethaby declined to be drawn by prophesies of the impending doom of his track allocations in this event, and the laugh was certainly on his side when Dufty came like a bolt from the blue in the final, and defeated Flewellyn by a convincing margin in two seconds faster time. Herewini, ton, would have given Flewellyn something to think about had he not met with accidental interference turning into the back stretch the last time round. *

Blakeway found the starts he had to concede in the half mile amateur too much for liim, and no wonder, as he would have been called on to ride faster time to win than did Henderson in the second distance of the big match race, after winning his heat in the fastest time recorded for either cash or amateur competitors during the evening, Rowe off 90 yards fairly cut loose in the final, which he won as he liked in 1.3, or a second slower than his heat. Clarke, who gave him such a good tussle in the first heat, could not reproduce the same form in the final.

In the light' of past and present performances, the handicaps for the open hundred yards sprint rather suggested that the handicapper had gone the length of moving a hearty vote of noconfidence in himself. It is all very well to set a double winner a good stiff handicap at his third appearance, but a perusal of the handicap list for this and the two previous gatherings make it apparent that the yardage allocator was so severe on the backmarker, Hudson, as to make his task a practically hopeless one from start to finish.

As" already indicated, Gribble's run in the amateur hundred was quite the best sprint performance of the evening. This runner has been running some tip-top races lately.

Phil O'Shea and Jack Henderson went south on Sunday afternoon by car to Hamilton, thence bound for Christchurch by train. Probably, by this time, they are "home and dried." Both proved very popular during their stay in Auckland.