Rose Drops Big Athletics

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 92, 9 July 1927, Page 11

Rose Drops Big Athletics

FARM NEEDS ATTENTION NO INTERNATIONAL EVENTS (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Friday. Following R. A. Rose’s inability to take part in the New Zealand crosscountry championship at Christchurch last Saturday, comes the startling news

that he is not likely to accept inclusion in the New Zealand team to take part in the Olympic Games at Amsterdam next year. Further than this Rose has intimated his inability to cross the Tasman Sea this year to* take part in the Australian and New Zealand crosscountry champion-

R. A. Rose. ship, H-ius leaving the way clear for the Auckland athlete, Savidan. It is stated that Rose will not in future be taking part in any racing which will necessitate a lengthy absence from his farm in the Masterton district. He states that he cannot now afford to be absent from his holding to the extent he has been in past years, especially for such a lengthly period as would be entailed by a visit to Amsterdam and Australia. It is only about a year since he visited the United States and Europe, during which period he had to leave his farm in the care of others, and he does not feel that he can again adopt the same procedure. This decision will be something of a shock to those followers of the sport who have long held Randolph Rose to be one of the finest distance men in the world, and who were looking to him to be one of the most reliable “strings” in the New Zealand team. Rose holds most of the New Zealand distance records from a mile upwards, but apart from this his delightful personality made him one of the bestliked men on the track in the Dominion, and at the moment there is nobody in view who will be able to fill the gap which he will leave by his withdrawal from active participation in the biggest events of the athletic world of New' Zealand.