HAZARDOUS COURSE FOR STUDENTS' RIVER RACE

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 9

HAZARDOUS COURSE FOR STUDENTS' RIVER RACE

The water was cold, the Avon was full and the hazards, both natural and engineered, were

legion, when Canterbury Uni* versitv College - students held their Capping Wee£'~“BiKe’ ’ race in the Avon yesterday. A nightmare of compulsory stop, keep clear ano road block signs, the stretch of river between Antigua street and the Worcester street bridge presented a trial by water to which many succumbed. The crowds of lunch-time spectators who lined the banks of the river surged and broke as astounding craft were launched below the weir. First came the s.s. Farouk, “Nasser’s Pilot Boat.” with a crew of self-appointed sewer-inspectors. When it finally got under way its speed proved to be about half a knot, powered it was by one student harnessed to the prow and retarded by the valiant action of its crew who swarmed about it repelling haka-party boarders. More exotic but hardly more seaworthy was a bicycle mounted on a sutf ski and cunningly camouflaged by a veritable maze of rigging. Its chain transmission to a stern-mounted paddle failed frequently but the porthole, dangling from the spars, provided the navigator with an admirable view until the entire superstructure was demolished by a sudden, Neptune-like upheaval near the finishing line. Bicycles were ridden, pushed, carried and floated by their desperado owners ana the most strenuous efforts of the haka party failed to deter most oi them from riding gleefully along

the island. The leading competitor. B. J. McGlinchy, was attacked from the rear by a grassskirted marauder as he approached the finishing line—after successfully navigating the tightly strung underwater rope barrier —and with a despairing shout he sank to his neck in a pothole beside the “bus-stop” in the middle of the river. He managed to heave himself across the rope, however, well before the second man, R. G. Powell, had run the gauntlet of tophatted “officials” and carried his bicycle across. The rafts and paddle-propelled craft, were among the last to appear but as they converged on the end of the course they we e attacked with vigour and unworldly yells. Mud from the disturbed river bottom was slung about, stirrup-pumps were used with a precision that would have done credit to a volunteer Are brigade, and the haka party demolished the Heath Robinson contraptions with as much righteous indignation as that of the wreckers of the first cottonpicking machines. Prize for the best performances was awarded to an almost naked couplein an old tin bath. The bath had its gunwale at all times perilously close to the water but the crew revelled in its much-vaunted buoyancy and liberally soaped themselves as they bobbed along.