ROWING BAN

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 13, 30 January 1937, Page 15

ROWING BAN

IT HAS NOW BEEN LIFTED QUESTION OF STATUS HENLEY ON THAMES REGATTA The ban placed on the competition of manual workers at the Henley on the Thames Regatta is to be removed before the next English rowing season opens. Dominion oarsmen will welcome the withdrawal of this irritating definition which banned all manual workers as professipnal oarsmen, and, in soncequence debarred them from competing at the greatest of English regattas — Henley on the Thames. The English rule reads: "An amateur is one who has never been employed on manual labour for money or wages, or who is, or has been, by trade or employment for wages, an engineer, artistan or labourer, or engaged in any manual duty." The very conception of such a rule is an offence to the Dominion mind. Dominion /associations, and that means Australia, while froced to bow to the rule, have spurned it and have found ways of circumventing it. However, to the English mind, steeped for centuries in the feudal system, it seemed the correct thing that the village blacksmith should be debarred from competition on an equal basis with the village squire. For a quarter of a century the rule has withstood the censure of the democratic section of the English Press, and the English people. The English Henley, however, was traditionally amateur — that is according to the conception of amateurism by the Amateur Rowing Association. In opposition to this viewpoint, the National Amateur Rowin Association grew into the most progressive association in England both in numbers and in strength. It is as a result of pressure from the N.A.R.A. that the rule is to go. To intending competitors at the English Henley froih outside the British Isles the rule has been farcical in its application. When the Australian crew won the Grand Challenge Cup at the 1912 Henley it included several men who under the English interpretation were professionals. They were manual workers, but they were naively described as public servants or of sqme such vocation acceptable to the A.R.A. It was not that the Australians wanted to deceive the English as--sociation; they just did not respeet such a law and did not intend to al|low it to interfere with their rowing venture. In 1928, when he went to the Olympic Games, Bobbie Pearce was the outstanding sculler in the world, and as such would have liked to contest the Diamond Sculls at Henley. The entry was never made, for at that juncture Pearce was a carpenter, and as such was not eligible for entry. Later, as a representative of a Canadian distillery he was accepted and won the title. It is certain, however, that hnd the New South Wales police crew desired to compete in the Grand Challenge Cup on their way to the Berlin Olympiad their entry would have been rejected. Yet the first and st\cond crews in the Grand Challenge Cup, Zurich (Switzerland) and Leander, competed with the Australians at the Olympic Games a few weeks later.