MEN STILL FIRST: WOMEN’S PROGRESS IN SPORT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19476, 11 May 1925, Page 13

MEN STILL FIRST: WOMEN’S PROGRESS IN SPORT.

Is the woman athlete ever likely to challenge the present supremacy of man ? asks Major N. W. Fraser in the Daily Chronicle. The question would have been ridiculous even ten years ago, but nowadays it is often asked. Women have equalled or beaten men at so many arts and crafts that I have been looking up sporting records and figures. The results are interesting. With one exception, man is supreme at all ball games. The exception isr-croquet. For the croquet championship the sexes compete on equal terms. Miss L. Gower won the championship in 1905, while Miss D. D. Steel has twice taken the champion cup, open to the ten best players of the year, as selected by a committee of the Croquet Association. _ . Elsewhere man’s superiority is in some cases—cricket, football, billiards —almost immeasurable, though one does not forget that at cricket Miss Muriel I\laxted, playing for a men’s club against men s dubs, has taken over 200 wickets at a very small There is also a great disparity at squash, rackets, at which man is generally set to concede woman ten in a game of fifteen aces, while die enjoys two “hands,” or innings, to his one. The ladies squash rackets championship, however, is barely three years old, and improvement is bound to come. « * * * Hockey is the team game at which women have made the biggest advance. It is difficult to compare form, but one mav not be rash in suggesting that the All-England Women’s Hockey Association could field an eleven which would make, a bold light against almost any masculine club. Miss M. Pollard, for one, is srenerally admitted to possess all the dash, speed, and skill of a man. ... There is not a great deal in it in golf, Jnwn tennis, Badminton. Hero in skill and style women are fully, equgl to men, and the inequality in power is decreasing. At lawn tennis, for instance, women havo abandoned their traditional base-line game, and some of them, notably Miss Kyan, hit as hard as an average man. If the championships of these games were open to both sexes, one does not think that at present woman would have any real chance of winning, but probably she would beat some men. Further, one suggests that woman has not vet reached the limit of her powers at such games. * * * * It is, however, in track athletics that the greatest developments .are likely to dnsne. At present woman is outclassed here. The fastest woman is about 17 yards slower in 100 yards than the fastest man, and tho disparity increases rapidly with distance. In the jumps and field events woman is nowhere, no woman having yet done sft in the high jump or 17ft in the long. But women are progressing by leaps and bounds, so to speak. Twelve seconds was good enough to win the 100 yards at tho first Women’s Olympiad in 1922. To-day the record stands* at 11 5-10th seconds, or nearly'good enough to win a boys’ public schools’ championship in an average year. Perhaps “Atalanta” of the twentieth century will bo content with tills measure cf achievement?