“SNOWY" BAKER

Hokitika Guardian, 12 November 1932, Page 2

“SNOWY" BAKER

EX-ATHLETE VISITS AUSTRALIA. AUCKLAND, November 10. At forty-eight years of age, Mr Reg L. (Snowy) Baker, a! famous Australian picture actor and champion allround athlete, is still a first-class exponent of polo, and still boxes, swims and fences. Mr Baker passed through Auckland on the Mariposa on his way to see his people in Australa, and is on the lookout for polo ponies. Mr Baker has been Ijving in California for seven years, and has left behind him in Hollywood, his wife and two children. He is interested in a group 6f nine clubs, and is a director of the concern which controls them. The clubs include, polo, athletic, yacht and gun activities. “I find as I go along through life that the vigorous exercises are still good in 'a mild way.” said r Baker. “I am a great lov;er of competition, and for the past five or six years I have been playing polo, and I’ll keep playing until my nfimber goes up. I play five games of polo every week.” Mr Baker said his main hobby was trying to inculcate the spirit of sportsmanship into the children who belong to the clubs. He believes that sport in every phase, done properly, it a great mental as well as physical developer. “I have tried to convince them thnt children should be versatile athletes,” said Mr Baker. “The American tendency is to specialise. If they find a young man who as a sprinter, they train him for the hundred yards until they burn him out. That is not improving the oondition of the people,” Mr Baker was the Australian attache during the Olympic Games at Los Angeles and entertained the New Zealand team. He has now seen three Oylm*nads, at London in 1908, at Stockholm in 1912 and at Los Angeles. ’•There is no doubt about it, the American organisation was the best of the lot,” said Mr Baker.