Ideal Sports.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIC, Issue 13355, 3 August 1907, Page 3 (Supplement)

Ideal Sports.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN. With fleeting memorial of undersized jockeys perched on the necks of thoroughbreds", of disagreeable episodes in the history of the America Cup rate, or of equally unpleasant hitches at that headquarters of air "that is pure in sport, Henley Regatta, we sniff, says a writer in a home paper, whenever mention is made of American sportsmanship; we sniff, and we think that there is no more to b? said. Now this fine superiority is not wholly commendable. Those who have watched baseball and otliei- competitive events ill the States know that American spoitsmauship is not quite the same as English. But to admit that it, is different, to admit even that in many quarters it falls a little short of our best standards, is not by any means to damn it utterly. We have in fairness to consider the difference in age and composition between the two nations. Somewhere in his delightful book on fly-fishing, Sir Edward Grey points out. t'hat the ultra-competitive spirit of boyhood and youth disappears with age, and that the; angler of mature years delights in fisliing for his own sake, and not merely to beat his neighbour's catch. America is a nation in its boyhood, and the competitive spirit is irrepressible. The American not only plays to. win, but regards it as a disgrace to be beaten. Hence his secret training and mysterious prsparations for victory, which .wc, as a-rule, despise, and which sesm to us not playing the game-. This is the whole difference: .we play the- game for itself, and the American plays it for the result. Hence it is .perhaps that the only representative of England and Englishbred horses who carried . all the honours at Olympia is indeed an American citizen. It is the strenuous passion for competition that will have to be toned down before American sportsmanship is quite entitled to rank with that of communities hedged with the traditions of a hundred generations. The best American, sportsmen know this themselves. Is it for onemoment supposed that ihe severity of the Henley authorities is resented in one single decent club in New York? The-M.C.C. and A.A.A. . cannot be run on the tinoi of a- meat trust, and on the day-When Transatlantic business methods find their way'into the governance of our games and sports England will have taken s;cond place in the world of sport. There are signs that the fear is not an idh one.