Many Victories In Australia For New Zealand Athletes

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1935, Page 12

Many Victories In Australia For New Zealand Athletes

PREDECESSORS OF 1935 TEAM HAVE BUILT UP FINE TRADITION

«THE New Zealand team which is visiting Australia this month is making the first amateur’ athletic invasion of the Commonwealth from the Dominion in nine years. The team is a good one, but it will be up against stronger opposition than any of the Dominion teams that have made the trip before, for a British team and a Finnish team as well as the best the Commonwealth can produce will be competing against the New • Zealanders. But the men from New Zealand have behind them a really fine tradition of great athletes and splendid performances in past visits to Australia, and they will live up to it. Hopes are held in New Zealand that the Melbourne Centenary Games will mark the resumption of a regular interchange of visits between the two countries. Australasian championships were started in 1893, and 15 such meetings were held, at approximately two-yearly intervals. New Zealand competed against teams from the various Australian States, and for purposes of point scoring was treated as a State. In the fixing of the venue for the various meetings, New Zealand was also treated as a State, and only four of the championships were held in the Dominion, the first in Christchurch in 1896, the second in Auckland in 1901, the third in Wellington in 1911, and the fourth in Wellington in 1927. The 1927 meeting was of special interest. The New Zealand team ■won the teams championship for the seventh time. New Zealand at that meeting scored as many first places and more second places than all the States of Australia together. And it was the last Australasian championship meeting to be held. When these championships were abandoned it was intended that they should be replaced by biennial international meetings between Australia and New Zealand. It was never anticipated that competition between the two countries should lapse as it has done, but the legislators made the mistake of dropping one form of competition before arranging another. Then came bad times, and although the Council of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association has always since endeavoured to resume regular contests the financial position of the sport in Australia has one big stumbling block. Australian athletes have visited New Zealand since 1927, but no New Zealand teams have been to Australia since the Australasian championships of 1926. . This year’s team goes over, it is hoped, to start a new era of competition. Fine Hurdling Record. Random recollections of the men who have won honours for New Zealand in Australia in past years are of interest now that another team is seeking laurels. Some of them were really great athletes. The first performance

of note was at the first meeting in Melbourne in 1893, when D. Matson (Canterbury) won the 440yds hurdles in 1.1 1-5. Untill9l9 the hurdles in this race were 3ft 6in, and there have been slower performances in New Zealand championships over the 3ft hurdles. Matson won the New Zealand championship for 1892-93 in 1.1 4-5. New Zealand was generally strongly represented in this event at the Australasian meetings, and won it 10 of the 15 times it was contested. Other New Zealanders who showed Australian spectators how to take the sticks were A. H. Holder (Wanganui), who won in 0.59 4-5, at Sydney in 1897, after winning the New Zealand title in 0.58 4-5, G. W. Smith (Auckland), at Brisbane in 1899, and Melbourne in 1904 (he also won at Auckland in 1901), H. St. A. Murray (Canterbury), who won at Hobart in 0.58 2-5 in 1908, and G. P. Keddell (Southland), at Brisbane in 1909. Perhaps the 440yds hurdles took to Australia the best collection of athletes from New Zealand of any of the events. Matson broke the world record for the race. Smith, who was later to win fame as one of the great three-quarters of the great All Black Rugby team of 1905, won five Australasian titles and 14 New Zealand titles. He was twice Australasian champion over the 120yds hurdles, and he held sprint as well as hurdle national championships. Murray went to the Olympic Games in 1908, and it has always been considered that he would have been the hardest to beat over the long-distance hurdles but for the fact that at the games it was found that the height had been dropped to 3ft. He was five times New Zealand champion. Keddell, one of the country’s most popular athletes, is now spoken of almost with reverence by the men who knew him. He collected both Australasian hurdle crowns twice, the New Zealand 120yds three times, 440yds once, and the New Zealand long jump four times. His 23ft 3in, established in 1906, is still the best performance by a New Zealander. Perhaps the greatest New Zealand hurdler of them all, however, was H. E. Wilson (Wellington), who won the 120yds event at Sydney in 1920. Wilson was three times New Zealand 120yds hurdles chamnion, four times champion over the 440yds hurdles, and lOOvds and 220yds champion once. At the Olympic Games in 1920 he finished fourth in the final of the short hurdles event in a real ’’blanket finish.” New Zealand has sent fewer sprinters ' of international class to Australia than athletes for almost any other event, but W. A. Woodger (Wellington), who took both sprints at Brisbane in 1909. was a really fine sprinter. P Opie (Canterbury), who won the l/*yds. 220yds and 440yds at Wellington in 1911. was the only other New Zealander to win an Australasian sprint title. L. A. Tracy (Wellington), who won the 440yds at Hobart in 1924 in 0.50 2-5, did not win a New Zealand title over this distance, but his name appears thrice in the list of champions of New Zealand at 220yds—once as that of the first New Zealander to finish in this race, once as indubitable champion, and once as a joint-holder of the title. Tracy to-day is the secretary of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association.

W, Bolger, the well-known golfer who so ably upheld Australian prestige against overseas players in the Australian golf championship recently, is of very slight build, according to a New Zealander who has seen him in action. So slight is he, indeed, that he uses a set of women’s clubs. * # * Mitori Gogea. a 21-year-old Rumanian boxer is 7ft 4in high. He hopes to become a second- Primo Camera.

One of the most notable athletes New Zealand has ever produced, W. F. Trembath (Southland), won the . halfmile at Hobart in 1908 after winning the New Zealand titles Over 440yds and 880yds. Trembath was a runner for 19 years, and he ended his career at the age of 35 in 1924 by winning the 440yds and 880yds professional championships of New Zealand. His best times were: 100yds. 0.10 1-5; 220yds, 0.22; 440yds, 0.49 1-5; 880yds, 1.55 4-5. His two New Zealand titles in the 1907-08 season earned him selection for the trip to Hobart where he beat Nigel Barker, one of the greatest all-rounders Australia has ever produced, for the Australasian 880yds title. When he returned to New Zealand Trembath turned professional, and he had victories over

L. C. McLachlan (father of the L. C. McLachlan who is a member of the present New Zealand team), Alex Campbell, and the American, C. E. Holway. In 1911 he went to Australia and beat A. B. Postle for the 440yds professional championship of the world, subsequently losing the title to Holway. Two years after returning from the war he staged a most amazing “comeback” and in 1922 he was again winning New Zealand professional titles as well as handicap events. Trembath was probably the greatest athlete New Zealand ever produced. In 1922, at Adelaide, the Australasian half-mile was won by a man who dominated athletics in Canterbury about that time, C. H. Taylor, Jun., who recorded the good time of 1.58 1-5. Taylor was New Zealand 440yds champion twice, and 880yds champion four times, and at his best he was as outstanding among New Zealand half-milers as T. G. Broadway is to-day. He ran well over every distance from 100yds to 880 yds. won several Canterbury championships over 440yds and 880yds, and fie showed his versatility by winning Canterbury championships over 440yds hurdles in 1920 and 1926. The Distance Races. New Zealanders have always impressed Australians more over the mile and three miles than over shorter distances, and won the Australasian three miles on 10 occasions. R. A. Rose (Wellington), twice holder of the mile and three miles titles, is the greatest distance runner the Dominion has sent to the Commonwealth, and he collected his first Australasian titles at Hobart in 1924. New Zealand record-holder for mile, two miles and three miles, his first two marks still stand. He won the Dominion mile championship twice and the three miles five times, and the cross-country championship once. His greatest run was his world grass track record of 4.13 3-5 in beating Lloyd Hahn, of America, at Masterton, in 1926. One of the most provocative of athletic arguments for many years to come will be whether Rose was a better runner than J. W. Savidan (Auckland), whom he beat in the last Australasian championships in 1927. New Zealand sent two really firstclass walkers to Australia—D. Wilson (Auckland), and H. E. Kerr (Wellington—and in field events P. Munro (Wellington), and J. W. McHolm (Wellington) are the finest two of the strongmen brigade that the country has ever produced. Their collecting of titles took place over a long period of years, and Munro is still the hardest to beat at shot-putting and _ discus-throwing. S. A. Lay (Taranaki), a specialist, joined the world’s best class as a javelinthrower; he is reported to be making a “come-back” this season. Many of New Zealand’s best athletes were not Australasian championship winners in Australia. Many fine athletes who were have not been ' mentioned above, but the records of thosewho have been mentioned are sufficient to show that when this year’s team goes out for its first competition on January 26, it will have behind it men of which the country may well be proud. ' SPRINTER.