NOTES ON HANLAN.

Feilding Star, Volume V, Issue 35, 25 March 1884, Page 3

NOTES ON HANLAN.

[.New Zealand Herald.] The champion sculler is a f rauk-looking manly yoonjr fellow. ' H# is of medium sise and well-built, but there is nothing in his appearance to indicate the extraordinary strength of muscle which he possesses. He is very pleasant spoken and has a ffinnitts smile. I fancy that in Sydney he will be all the rage among the ladies, but at he has already a. wife, he- is not likely to lose his head among the beauties of New South Wales. :He has a remarkably high forehead, which is surmounted by a cluster of dark chestnut curls. His brown eyes beam with intelligence and his complexion is fre in and clear. There is nothing of the " professional " about him. He look* a well-to-do young English gentleman.

Hanlan thus explains how he came to be an oarsman : — " My mother died when I was tiro years ' old, and to the care of my two elder sisters I owe whatever there is that 'is'igbod iti. "me. Not long after mother's death father removed to Toronto Island, -a short distance from t lie city, where he bought and ran a sraa/Jish summer hotel. This residence in cluldhood explain* my being an oargiuau today,, for, being cut off from the mainland Vy quite a stretch of water, boats were our constant means of conveyance and communication. I could paddle about r«ry handily in quo before I was fix* yean old, and from fire to fifteen T was eoiutaatlj rowing sprint race* with tbr> island and city ooy«. I «oon bec«m<? known among; the bays a? the best rower far my age in the lot It was through their bolief in me that' X was induced to «ater for my first public race in a regatta held afiTonmto in the summer of 1872." Since then Hanlan has figured in nearly all the great races which hare been rowed sad his success has been phenomenal.