UNIVERSITY RACE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 108, 31 January 1935, Page 10

UNIVERSITY RACE

--0 ■ Cross-Country Annual NEW ZEALANDERS TRIUMPH A description of the 50th university cross-country-race held recently over the 7-1-mllc course at Horton Kirby, Kent, England, between, Cambridge and Oxford is given by 1 the London •‘Times.” The first man home was 11. 31. Barrer, Cambridge, who is a son of Mr. T. 11. Barrer, ilasterton, chairman of the Wellington Harbour Board. Cambridge won the race on points, which brings their sum of victories up to 27, as against Oxford’s 23. The time. 46min. usee., was the slowest since the Roehampton course was abandoned in 1926. ‘‘The weather did almost everything possible to provide as severe a test of stamina as any cross-country runner is ever likely to meet. The long stretches of plough were so soddeiied by a week’s rain, which increased to a downpour during the race, that the competitors were at times hard put to it to progress at all, let alone run. So strong was the wind, adverse for a long, open tract before the crucial halfway stage, that the trail layers had to pin the paper down -with stones. ‘•One wondered if these 7} miles, exacting enough at the best of times, were not too much for undergraduates on Saturday. However that may be the conditions levelled up the form and, with the help of half a dozen men, in the highest university traditions, produced as exciting a competition as there can ever have been. But still it was a test of endurance rather than of running. . . .” “Even at an advanced stage,” the paper states," “the issue was still unusually alive, as down the homeward slope to the final crossing of the road the diminutive figures of .Barrer and E. C. Weir skimmed past the sturdier Oxford pair (P. J. Albery and A. A. Robertson), and the decisive moment was passed. Only once has the side which got the first two men home failed to win. Albery called forth his last reserves to come again. He left Robertson, and for a second threatened the leaders, whereupon Barrer put all idea of organising a dead-heat with Weir out of his mind, and finished with quite an amazing flourish after such a gruelling and crossing the swollen Darenth. “Weir and Albery were within Osee. of him, and it is safe to say that the record must have been lowered for the fourth time in the last five years had conditions-been normal.. But a great race such as this is worth all the records in the world. Robertson came a plucky fourth 78see. behind, and P. D. Ward played a captain’s part by clinching his side's victory in the strategic fifth position.”