THE CONTINENTAL WALKING CHAMPION.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2337, 13 September 1880, Page 2

THE CONTINENTAL WALKING CHAMPION.

Considerable interest has recently been awakened in the many gymnastic and athletic societies of the German capital by a walking match arranged between the celebrated pedestrian Treeman and one Kaepcrnick, a private in the fifth company of the Kaiser Franx Grenadier Guards. The distance agreed upon was one well calculated to test tiie powers of endurance of both competitors, and the match was brilliantly won by the Prussian grenadier, who strode past the winning post nearly 3 hours before Freeman gave in,the latter having walked 258 miles in of hours. Kacpernick now occupies the proud position of “Continental Walking Champion.” Besides winning the stakes, he has been presented with £25 by his backers as a Sieges-Houorar, or “Reward of Victory”; but the perfect joy'- of his success has been somehowdashed by the influence of three days' pack-drill, imposed by his commanding officer upon the technical ground that ‘ a Prussian soldier may not make a public exhibition of himself,” Kaepernick has already undergone his punishment, which cannot have caused much inconvenience to a man of his thew and sinew, and is doubtless more than balanced in his favour bj r the glory of having beaten so renowned an AngloSaxon pedestrian as Freeman.