HUMOROUS SPORTS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 10189, 29 December 1925, Page 3

HUMOROUS SPORTS

MIRTHFUL NOVELTY EVENTS

Almost every season Avltnesses the introduction of some amusing, if ludicrous, noAmlty in outdoor sport and pastimes (says a London paper). A few years ago there Avas quite art original kind of competition at tho Liverpool Polo Club’s annual show, and sports, held at ChiklAvall, near that city. It Avas an event for competitors of both sexes, and was knoivn as the “suffragette race.” Each male competitor laid to walk to the centra of the ground, Avliere a lady in Availing assisted to insinuate him into a skirt.

With the same graceful aid he had also to don a blouse or cloak and a fiat or bonnet, afterwards opening an umbrella. Held by grooms, ponies were in waiting about 20 yards from the starter. As soon as dressed the competitors had to run to their mount and sit astride and race round a post. At some fimilat’ sports on the other side of the Mersey there Avas a novelty in the form of an “elopement race.” Competitors a\ ere, of course, of the male persuasion, and aa hat each had to do was to ride his horse from orio end of the field to the other, pick up his “eloping” partner, and ride with he’* in his arms to the starting point.

A variation of this kind of race Avas brought off at a certain West of England river regatta. There Avere ten competitors, and at a given signal they had to launch their boats, row to another some distance away, in which ten ladies awaited them, and carry the damsels off. One hold, bad man actually essayed to carry off two, and Avas promptly tumbled into the river, to the great delight of the spectators. Strange as it may seem, this did not ‘upset’ him in the least, and he v-r.s speedily hack in his boat,, pulling for all he was worth toward the Avinning post.

A novel match between women over twenty-five created no small excitement. They had 1 to run a couple of hundred yards, take a needle from a cushion thread it, and put twelve stitches in a piece of calico, afterwards returning to the starting pointThere wore a. great many pricked fingers in this competition and the winner was a woman of fifty. Another event that never loses its noveltv is an egg-and-spoon race. It can always he relied on to provide great fun, and, with variations, is always most popular with tlie fair sex. At a Sunday school treat near Liverpool some time ago there was a race of this kind with boiled eggs minus tlie spoons. The competitors had to run a hundred yards carry a hot-boiled egg in tlieir naked hands. _ They were at liberty to change it from one hand to the other, which most of them did very rapidly, hut dropping it meant disqualification. Changing the eggs as they ran, hot ns it was, proved a trying operation to most of the girls, and only three out- of eight succeeded in holding it till the end of the race. A bottle avenue mco was introduced at a fashionable gymkhana meeting at Long Island, New York. Tlie bottles were placed on the ground to form a lane, through which teams of blindfolded girls were driven by young men. The object was to knock down as few of the bottles as possible, the team upsetting the fewest being declared the winner. In ordinary circumstances girls require tactful handling, hut nothing to'what they require when being piloted between two long rows of bottles, while a crowd- of of spectators are shrieking with laughter.