Super-Blues Of English Varsity Athletics

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 6788, 20 February 1932, Page 13

Super-Blues Of English Varsity Athletics

A NOTABLE SUCCESSION IN POST-WAR TIMES The. rapid improvement in English athletics which has taken place since the war can be traced largely to the supermen” athletes that the universities have produced during that period, says a writer in an English paper. Of the Oxford men, B. G. D. Rudd, winner of the Olympic 400 metres, 1920, and such distance and cross-country men as E. A. Montague, one of Great Britain’s finest steeplechasers, will not soon be forgotten. But it is Cambridge that has produced the remarkable sequence in 11. B. Stallard, G. M. Butler, 11. M. Abrahams (Olympic 100 metres champion and record holder, 1924), D. G. A. Lowe (Olympic 800 metres champion and record holder, 1924 and 1928), and the hurdlers, Lord Burghley (Olympic 400 metres low hurdles champion and record holder, 1928) and G. C. Wcightman-Smith, who, although he failed to win the Olympic final at Amsterdam in 1928, yet set the Olympic 110 metres high hurdles record at 14 3-ssec, in one of the heats. And, finally, there has been R. M. N. Tisdall, winner of the 440yds flat, and 120yds hurdles, long jump and shot at the last Oxford and Cambridge sports, who has proved of too happy-go-lucky a disposition to attain to the world’s championship laurels which should he still within his grasp. Where are the successors lo these stars of the universities’ track and field teams? At the moment all eyes are centred upon J. F. Cornes, the Oxford president. In 1930 he .won the Southern Counties mile in slashing fashion, returning 4min 17sec, and that he is getting back to the top of his form is obvious from his fine running in the relays against Cambridge. .