FAMOUS ATHLETE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 264, 7 November 1932, Page 5

FAMOUS ATHLETE.

"SNOWY" BAKER IN AUCKLAND KEEN POLO PLAYER AT 48. At 48 years of age, Mr. Reg L. (Snowy) Baker, a famous Australian picture actor and champion all-round athlete, is still a first-class exponent of polo, and still boxes, swims and fences. Mr. Baker is passing through Auckland on the Mariposa on his way to eee his people in Australia and is on the lookout for polo ponies.

Mr. Baker has been living in California for eeven years, and has left behind him in Hollywood, his wife and two children. He is interested in a group of nine clubs, and ie a director of the concern which controls them. The clubs include polo, athletic, yacht and gun activities. "I find as. I go along through life that the vigorous exercises are still good in a mild way," eaid Mr. Eaker. "I am a great lover of competition, and for the past five or six years I have been playing polo, and I'll keep playing until my number goes up. I play five gamee of polo every week."

Mr, Baker said his main hobby was trying to inculcate the spirit of sportsmanship into the children who belong to the clubs. He believee that sport in every phase, done properly, is a great mental ae well as physical developer. "I have tried to convince them that children should be versatile athletes," said Mr. Baker. "The American tendency is. to specialise. If they find a young man who ie a eprinter, they train him for the hundred yards until they burn him out. That is not improving the condition of the people."

Mr. Baker was the Australian attache during the Olympic Games at Los Angeles and entertained the New Zealand team. He has now seen three Olympiads, at London in 1908, at Stockholm in 1912 and at Los Angeles. "There was no doubt about it, the American organisation was the best of the lot," said Mr. Baker. Mr. Baker mentioned that the picture industry, like every other industry in the world, had gone through the slump, but was gradually coming back. Most of tie studios in Hollywood were starting out again, and it would not be long, he believed, before the industry would be flourishing again.