“WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIPS”

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 27 February 1935, Page 6

“WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIPS”

The news that cheering crowds attended the ‘ ‘ world’s table tennis championships” recently held at Wembley is indication that even the staid British public can still become a little hysterical over titles in sport. We have heard, of course, of the “All America marbles championships for boys featured hi the news reel of the cinema. Likewise it is a fact the “world’s horse shoe throwing championship” has been regularly held for many years in a southern American state. But lest we grow a trifle supercilious in viewing these antics of our American cousins, let us remember that here in New Zealand we have more than once held “world’s championships” in chopping and wood sawing. By what authority these contests are given world status we do not know, nor can we assure anybody that the best lumberjacks of. Qauacla,....foi example, were represented and fairly ousted. Perhaps this may not lessen the pride'til the winners in their achievements, but in’the eyes of the public it certainly strips numerous leaved "front, the. laurels which adorn the brows of the. title-holders. Perhaps in the sum total of smiles which go round the globe at these play-time awards of world titles in each other’s backyards there may be some directed at New Zealand. It is not so many years since we solemnly conducted a contest for the “world’s butter championship” at one of our winter shows. OC course all the competitors playingin our backyard were well represented —but this was a “world’s championship.” A few entries may have come of their own volition from Australia, but the field was rendered complete by compulsory entries picked up on the other side of the world and forwarded willy-nilly. A cask of Danish butter, bound to be in an advanced state of deterioration, was solemnly graded “second grade” and amidst the plaudits of the assembled “world” the “world’s championship” was handed by a New Zealand judge to a New Zealand entry. All of which serves to show that the world’s table tennis championship, won incidentally by a Hungarian, might have been quite a representative contest and that the old proverb anent the throwing of stones whilst living in glass houses can still apply quite close to home.