FRENCH ATHLETES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 114, 5 July 1911, Page 6

FRENCH ATHLETES.

, >’%■ * () Recent successes of Frenchmen in important athletic contests have given impetus to the open-air movement which is sweeping over France. The defeat of Scotland by France at Rugby football a few months ago was regarded as a tremendous achievement, and now that a Frenchman has carried off the championship of England,at lawn jtennis on covered courts and a sixtccn-year-old boy has Ouatcn Wilding in Paris there is no limit to the ambitions of the gay nation. Tiro Paris correspondent of the ‘Daily Mail” remarks that British visitors are in the habit of declaring that Paris has changed, but they hardly realise the nature of the change. “In tire ceaseless stream of humanity hastening along the boulevards,” writes the correspondent, “the visitor will see the new race of men that is growing up in France, clean, wen-dressed, alert, athletic. He will notice that with his every visit certain types familiar to him become rarer—the comic opera Frenchman of the eccentric tup-hat and butterfly vie, the sallow, lanky French boy of his school days, with bare logs and erratic ideas on schoolboy honour..” The change is due entirely to the new-found activity of the nation. In the Paris district alone there are more than twenty Rugby football teams, and in the south, where Rugby as becoming a national pastime, there are over 200. Spree day tb-j Racing Club or tin? Stau Franca is will give an English Association football eleven a drubbing, and then it will be realised that there are considerably more than 1000 “soccer” teams in France and that no fewer than 400 of these arc* in the Paris district. Golf arid boxing are the latest sports to become popular, and the French have taken i.o golf with remarkable success. Boxing is forming an important p.nt of systems of physical culture, which are enjoying wonderful vogue in Franco. On the running track French athletes won bign honours many years ago, and, of course, in motoring and aviation then magnificent noi'v’o and skill have plan’d tnem in; the highest rank. Their rapid progress is being watched with interest across the Channel, and their British friends are welcoming the growing rivalry in their national sports.