Universities' Athletics

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28268, 4 May 1957, Page 5

Universities' Athletics

(Specially written for "The Press") LONDON. The Oxford-Cambridge athletics match is by tradition the opening meeting of the British track season. Cambridge may have had a surprising victory in the interuniversities Rugby match and its success in the boat race was quite unexpected. It was. however, ?. so^ ew | la t foregone conclusion that Cambridge would merely repeat its failure of the last 10 years 1" the athletics match. The result. 73-53 points in favour of Oxford was not as bad as had been expected and since many of Cambridge s athletes are freshmen. n ext year it should have a good chance of breaking the losing sequence. Derek Johnson, the Oxford president and winner of an Olympic silver medal at Melbourne, had already won six events ifi these sports and he was hoping to equal the record of Harold Abrahams who in his time at the university won eight events. Johnson won the mile in 4.09 seconds and 55 minutes later ran in the quarter-mile and was narrowly beaten into second place by the Oxford first runner, Solomon, in 49.3 seconds. Johnson who is reading medicine is now in his final year at Oxford and in July will leave for one of the hospitals of London University so Abrahams’s record will still stand.