LONDON’S MARVEL.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15981, 8 May 1924, Page 9

LONDON’S MARVEL.

UNIVERSITY BOAT RACE. “BLINKIN’ INSTITOOSIIUN.”

Cabling on the eve of the ’Varsity boat race, the London correspondent of the Sydney Sun said: — More than 1,000,000 people will line the banks of the Thames, between Putney and Morlakc, at 2 p.m. to-morrow, to witness the OxfordCambridge boat race. Nobody has yet explained clearly why this race, which often as not is a mere procession, annually fascinates and attracts. Yet it arouses the enthusiasm of the greatest assemblage of people in Ibe world, 00 per cent of whom don’t know the bow from the stern of 'the boat. They stand Cfty to a hundred deep along the towing paths, swarm over roofs, fill coal barges, and blacken bridges, waiting for the race. Many, with the rising tide overlapping 'their boot tops, stand in a keen easterly kind, with possibly snow, lor a tip-toe peep at a spectacle that is never in view for more than a minute. They go in discomfort, watch in discomfort, and return in discomfort. The underground combine has arranged to carry 500,000 within three hours. No Popping Corks. Along the murky riverfront, there is none of the glamour of functions such as Derby Day with quaint sideshows, picnics and popping corks. The boat race is a dull, grey, drab demonstration, at which spectators, as though at a funeral, have been seen to take off 'their hats when the crews pass without opening their mouths to cheer. Ask a Londoner and he’ll scratch his head, and say that perhaps the crowd comes, be-

cause it gives a Britisher a chance u? show his pride in a clean, healthy sport. It is one contest, anyway, which has never been rigged. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father, have stood on the same spot. "Blimc, can’t you understand? It’s a blinkin’ national instilooshun,” he will tell you. A Wild Night. j The faces of the two crews have I been photographed from every angle, and now arc more familiar than those of Cabinet Ministers. Almost every child from Land’s End to John O’ Groats, is sporting a light or dark blue ribbon. They know that Mellen, the Yankee Oxford stroke, parts his hair on the left, plays the banjo, and has a dog named Brontosaurus, that the crew won’t sign flappers’ autograph boks for fear their hearts would flutter. it is loudly proclaimed that Stobarl’s Cambridge crew have pinned their faith to Cambridge-brewed beer, partisans proudly pointing to the bulging calves of the ,1841 b. AngloAustralian Lance Elliot-Smith, son of a professor, who is rowing at No. 4. Even a long-distanced-lensed cinematograph camera has been employed to study the crew's facial expressions during the successive stages of the stroke; and it interestingly records the change from the strained look of agony at the commencement to one of satisfaction and relief when the blades have feathered and bodies are swinging rylhrrictically forward. Oxford, who are favourites at 2 t.o 1, are using a boat 754 inches long against Cambridge’s one of 748. Both have shown terrific bursts of speed, breaking short dislance records. Cambridge won by 4J lengths.