The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1937. OUR MOST POPULAR SPORT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 31, 6 February 1937, Page 8

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1937. OUR MOST POPULAR SPORT.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the icrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

For swimming, as for other sports, this season has been far from ideal. The water has been eool (although Southerners would not .say so), and the .sunshine, without which few swimmers feel entirely happy, lias been fitful and feeble. So swimmers have felt deprived, and have longed for some weeks (or at least several consecutive week-ends) of those cloudless, hot days in which the Auckland beaches are seen, and all those upon them foci, at their host. The hardened swimmers (who '•'went in every morning; last winter") may scoff at such concern about temperatures and clouded skies, but then the vast majority do not think of swimming only as an exercise. They think also of sun-bathing, of games on the. beach, and of the opportunities of meeting, friends or acquaintances. The beach has become a social institution.

It has not always been so. It is, in fact, «i new institution, no older than this century. This week Auckland has welcomed a team of life-savers from Australia, where hundreds of thousands of people habitually spend niany hou.vs of their summer-time leisure, on the scores of beautiful beaches within easy distance of the cities. Perhaps some in the Australian team would be incredulous if told that within this century, in Sydney, hundreds of respectable citizens were haled before the Police Courts and fined for bathing in public at Manly, Bondi, Coogee and elsewhere. Bathing was severely regulated, and prohibited except during very limited —and mostly very awkward —hours. There were no dressing enclosures, no facilities at all except in one or two resorts where Early Victorian bathing machines were installed. Those enthusiasts for freedom and salt water had to play the martyr to realise their desire. Prosecuted repeatedly, they defied the local Councils, which at last, realising that they were becoming the laughing-stock of the. community, "permitted" sea bathing at all hours. To-day the same suburbs over which those Councils had jurisdiction are rich and prosperous because of the universal popularity of the sport which "ignorance, prejudice and prudery" once combined to light.

Sydney is, of course, fortunate in having a climate and beaches peculiarly adapted to surfing, and nowhere else in the world is the practice so highly developed among so many people. On Auckland's most popular beaches surfing is possible only occasionally, and in consequence the bathing is almost too safe — for some bathers do not learn to swim, or they swim only indifferently well. The rapid increase in the popularity of the West Coast resorts is attributable mainly to the fact that they are surf beaches, and since they became easily accessible there has arisen the prospect o£ developing; the surfing art to a stage comparable with that acquired by the Australian. But whether .on surf beaches, or otherwise, bathing;is likely to remain, Auckland's most popular sport. Practically even- class and section of the community enjoys it, it is democratic in the extreme, and ifs cost is practically negligible. Although it became popular scarcely a generation ago; it has brought incalculable benefits to the community in the physical and mental health without which no wholesome pleasure can be fully enjoyed.