WHEELING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9674, 16 October 1909, Page 5

WHEELING.

J. /Waldie, of South Canterbury, while -training ' for the Timaru to ■Christcliurch road race, was rather badly hurt through the front forks of his machine breaking. ,Waldie' fe|l very heavily, and it will be a week before he will be able to work. - J. Tozer, the South Canterbury rider, will not be a starter in the road rice froin.Tima.ru to Christchurch, owing to" his not haying time to train. About a. month after the catastrophe ciat caused a provisional • prohibition--01 "motor-paced races in Prussia, the managers of the Botanical Garden track reopened with v a human-paced race, sprinting, events for the pacemakers, and a, .trio of four-cornered contests with "Major" Taylor, Henri Mayer, Poulain and . Willy Arend in the cast. Mayer beat" Poulain' in the general classification, Arend obtaining^ th|rd place, and the * n egro being" simply nowhere. Stbl, Berthet, van Neck and Ryser contested a humanpaced "hour," and Stol was given as the winner, although he and Berthet appeared • to have made a . dead heat of it. Some thousands of, people witnessed the races. At Breslau, Sheuermann won all three human-paced races for the ijk>ld • Cup, beating Rosenloecher, " Tommy " Hall and Bonhours. The American is certainly smart in some thing?. Ten days /after the world's cycling championships were decided at Copenhagen, the management of the Buffalo Velodrome advertised a " revenge " match between the four pace-followers who mst°in the 100 kilometres world's professional championship at the Danish capital, viz., Parent, Darragon, Walthour and Nat Butler. Strange to say, Parent, the winner at Copenhagen, finished last at Buffalo, some forty laps behind the winner, Walthcur", , Darragon being second and Butler third. The discussion on the amateur, his con uption and cure, shows no sign of waning (says "Cycling"). With remarkable unanimity the subject has been taken up in no uncertain manner by practically all writers on cycling topics, and there can be no doubt that, if the Union declines to take any action, its attitude will be liable to much misunderstanding. Wa fear that a clean sweep of the doubtful amateurs would have very little effect in purging the sport of jta present bad odour. A different course of action is called for^ the, first step in which would be to impose much stricter observation on sports secretaries and severer penalties, st/cli as th«i professionalising of an entire club found guilty, through its honorary officials, of the vice of corrupting an amateur. The next step would be to appeal to the cycle jtrade on logical grounds to cease ' the subsidising of racer&r— and a strong man would be able to draw up a mutual agreement between the various companies to entirely cut out this branch of their advertising expenditure. Nobody would be a penny the worse, but the sport would conceivably benefit. The Union might go further, and, as a safeguard of amateurism, rules should be drafted making secretaries of sj>orts-promoting clubs and members of the cycle trade ineligible , for ©lection to its council or committees. The greater the independence of the members of the Union the greater the- cause of pure amateurism, and men like Dr E. B. Turner, Mr James Blair, and other pillars of strength in the fight for pure sport would have their hands strengthened if the entire executive were unconnected in any way either' with sports promotion or the cycle industry. It is curious on what slight provocation the eternal controversy of amateur v. professional breaks out again (writes Ixion in the Manchester " Athletic News")- I have no intention of taking sides or breaking lances in the latest dispute, except to say this— that a long observation of and connection with various forms of sport have taught me that wherever the professional element has gained the upper hand it has always killed the true sporting instinct. Those who* used to say, with much unction, that they preferred the. avowed cycling professional to the " makers' amateur or the sham amateur never got much of my attention. The makers' amateur did at any rate ride to winthat was, in fact, the only reason of his being. And, after all, those who go out to see a sporting -.event want this as the primary thing—they want to see men who are put to win. I have seen the avowed professionals " cutting up" the prizes and «the heats in the most unblushing: manner, and it is perfectly certain that had they ' gone on uncontrolled the sport would have now been as dead as is the old-time Sheffield Handicap. Professionals as a class are not fitted to rule any sport ; the uncontrolled commercial instinct is in fact absolutely fatal to every kind of sport whatsoever. I. am not desirous of obtruding into this column any opinions affecting the footbalL dispute now in progress, but the moral is the_ same there as it has been in pedestrianism and ovcling. The practical death of English professional cycle racing was simply due to the fact that the public

would not pay to see Mr Arrangement and the bookmakers order things as they pleased, and, personally, iTiope we have seen the last of the business in these islands.