WOMEN AS SWIMMERS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 9 August 1907, Page 4

WOMEN AS SWIMMERS.

. i INTERVIEW WTTH MISS KELLERMAN. Last month Miss Annette Kcllerm-nm . (Sydney's champion lady swimmer of the world) was in New York, just about to enter oil some show enf-agrments, and several interesting interviews with her, of which the following is a sample, were published. "Bnt sometimes," said Miss Kellermann, in a talk at the New Grand Hotel, "a man has as much endurance as a woman, and, with his superior brute strength, no woman can hope to compete with lum. I don't like to say it," concluded the fair champion, "but it is so. " Miss Kellermann does not look as if she could swim any further than any other young woman who has had an opportunity to form aquatic liabits. She is very slight in figure, not particularly tall, and, in a smart tailored suit of dark led cloth, there was no- ] thine; about her to suggest the professional athlete, yet she is the victor of many battles. She has won forty long-distanoe contests, from one-mile up to 30 miles, and she has almost swum tlie English Channel, a feat that \ no one but Captain Webb has ever accomplished. She might have gone all the way across it had it not been j for seasickness and storm, and she means to try again. - "It is like hunting for the North Pole," she said. "You get fascinated with it, and always want to try again. But I want to wait awhile, till I get over the horrors of mal-de-mer, for the fear of it helps to bring it on. It's a dreadful experience, though, to swim the Channel, and a very weird one. You start at one o'clock in the morning, amid yells and shrieks and flickering lights." Yonr eyes are covered with black goggles, fastened down with collodion, so that when you take them off at the end of a swim a lot of the skin comes off with them. You wear a coating of lanoline about an inch and a half thick all over the body, to keep the cold out, and the little swimming costume is as light as possible, leaving the limbs and neck bare, as every atom of weight is a burden. I have only tried to swim the Channel twice, while the two men that got further than I did made half a dozen attempts, and once when I swam with them I got further than they did. So I don't think I did so badly." Miss Kellermann says that she just drifted into swimming. She has been perfectly at home in the water ever since she was seven, but until she was fourteen swimming shared equally in her favour with riding, tennis, and dancing. Then she happened to see Fred Lee swim. "I thought his stroke the most beautiful I had ever seen," she said, "and I began to imitate it. It was the double overarm stroke, and I have used it ever since, though our swimmers think it only suitable for short swims, j Well, in a few weeks I found that I could swim better than any girl of my acquaintance. Then I entered a contest and won it, and my career as a swimmer had begun." Miss Kellermann is now looking for new worlds to conquer. She talks nf swimming from the narrows to Coney Island, and will try some of the great rivers. She is greatly desirous also of meeting some Ameiiiaii women swimmer of importance. She is already in love with American women, whether ihey can swim or not. "I think they are absolutely the loveliest in the world," she declared. "They are so well made, and they dress -o well, and walk so well. In other countries you may see one woman in ten who walks well, lutl here it i.s 10 in 10." The "Fred Lee" referred to is probably Fred Lane, an ex-champion of Australia. Miss Kellermann is right I in her remarks about female swimmers, for considering how very fe wof thcri go in any way thoroughly for the pastime, a much larger percentage of women than men excel. .Madame Icacescu (the Austrian swimmer), in ■ her one attempt, at crossing the Channel, accomplished within very little of | th? best achievement of any of the male aspirants. The reason women are better distance swimmers than the opposit? sex is, perhaps (because their flesh is soft and not hard and solid as with most men athletes), they Moat lighter, and consequently the effort of propulsion is nothing like so great as it otherwise would be.

'ihe thoroughly trained English servant is, in his way, the most perfect kind of servant to be found anywhere, and in his station and for his duties he is not to be matched in the world. .iere will you find any men so competent iv their work, so completely trained and apparently emotionless in manner, so punctual, so clean, so smart, as an English butler, coachman, footman, or valet? — "Country life."