ACROSS COUNTRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 91, 8 July 1927, Page 10

ACROSS COUNTRY

N.Z. CHAMPIONSHIPS J. W. SAVIDAN’S SUCCESS WHAT OF R. A. ROSE? J. W. Savidan, the brilliant Auckland distance athlete, has had a great run of success this year. He is a triple New Zealand champion—one mile and three miles flat, and IO.QOO metres across country. Savidan was not originally selected in the New Zealand team which competed in the Australian championships at Brisbane last winter. Rose was away in England, and it was a case of “no Rose—nobody” with the N.Z.A.A.A. selectors. DID WELL IN BRISBANE So Savidan paid his own fare across, and his “exes” as well. Competingagainst brilliant runners of the calibre of Hyde and others, he ran a most creditable second and third in the distance races, and it was the unanimous opinion of his comrades on the trip, that with more experience, he would not have made one or two tactical errors in his running, without which he would have been very hard to beat. Back in New Zealand in late August or early September, he . assisted Auckland to secure the cross-country teams’ championship at Alexandra Park. But for an over-strenuous preliminary tryout a day or two after he had stepped off the boat, he might have won the individual championship, but as it was, his running was a rare example of unselfishness. He could have been further up than he was, but he chose to team with Tom Wilson, who was a sick man on the day of the race. The united efforts of Kells, Savidan, Wilson and Beauchamp brought the title to Auckland. ROSE’S ABSENCE Under the circumstances, the team that went south last week performed most creditably, and for Savidan the event was a notable triumph. Had Rose been able to compete, he would have to have been right at the top of his form to have beaten Savidan. There has been an ungenerous suggestion that Rose dodged the issue with Savidan, a suggestion all the more regrettable from the fact that it seems to obtain credence in high places in the athletic world of Auckland.

The sport is an amateur one, and Rose’s reasons for not competing will appeal to most fair-minded people, especially as he has gone further, and announced that he will not be a candidate for honours overseas, which is one of the biggest inducements to athletes of to-day.

Rose’s absence does not detract from Savidan's fine win on the Cashmere Hills course. Most people would have liked to have seen Savidan measuring strides with the much-travelled Wairarapa farmer, but it was not to be, and in any case, Auskland has supplied a worthy successor to Rose. Had a less autocratic attitude been taken up in A

uckland last year when Rose was here m his way to Europe, it is more than likely that he would have been seen n action before an Auckland crowd. H

enee, it is not a fair thing to now .ccuse Rose of shirking the issue.