UNIVERSITY BOAT RACE.

Shannon News, 20 May 1924, Page 4

UNIVERSITY BOAT RACE.

“BLINKIN’ IN STIT O O SHUN.

Cabling on tlio eve of tJie ’Varsity boat race, the London correspondent of the Sydney Sun said:— More than 1,000,000 people will line the banks of the Thames, between Putney and Mortlalse, at 2 p.iu to-moi row, to witness the Oxl’ord-Cambridgc boat race. : Nobody lias yet explained clearly Avhy this race, which often as not is a -■mere procession,. annually fascinates and attracts. Yet it' afGUSCSthe ■enthusiasm of the greatest assemblage o.f people in the world. 00 per. cent of whom don’t know the bow from the . stern of the boat-. They staud fifty to hundred deep along the towing paths, swarnt over roofs, till coal barges, and blacken bridges, waiting l'or the race. Many, with the rising tide overlapping, their boot tops, stand in a keen casteily wind, with possibly snow', fqr a tip toe peep at a spectacle that is never in view for move than a minute. .1 hey go in discomfort, watch in discomfort, and return in discomfort The underground combine has arranged.to cairy 500,000 within three hours. ? No Popping Corks.

Along the murky riverfront, there is none of the glamour of functions such as Derby Dify 'with Quaint sideshows, picuics and popping corks. Ihe boat race is a dull, grey, drab demonstration, at which spectators, as though at a funeral, have been seen to take off their hats when the crews pass without opening their mouths to cheer. Ask a Londoner and he’ll scratch his head, and say that peiliaps the crow T d comes, because it gives a Britisher a chance to show his gride in a clean., healthy sport. ,It is one ■contest, anyway, which has never been rigged. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father, have stood on the same spot, “lilime, can’t you understand ? It’s a blinkin’ national institooshun,” he will tell you. A Wild Night.

The faces of the two. crows have been photographed from every angle, ahd now more familiar than those of Cabinet Ministers. Almost every child from Land’s End to John O’ Groats, is sporting a light or dark ribbon. They know that Mellon, the Yankee Oxford stroke, parts his hair on the left, plays the banjo, and has a dog named Brontosaurus, that the ertnv won’t sign flappers autograph books for fear their hearts would flutl’t is loudly proclaimed that Sto. bait’s Cambridge crew have pinned their faith to Cambridge-brewed beei, partisans proudly pointing tio the. bulging calves of the lS4lb. Anglo-Aus-tralian Lance Elliot-Smith, son ot a professor, who is rowing .at, ■No. *• Even a long-distanced-lenscd cinematograph camera has been emp o> cc to study the crew’s facial expressions during the successive stages of the stroke; and it interestingly records the change from the strained ’ look of agony at the commencement to one of satisfaction and relief when the blades have leathered and bodies aic twinging rylhmetically tor ward. Oxford who are favouiites <, t - I,. arc using a boat 754 inches lon. against Cambridge’s one ot 748. Both have shown terrilie bursts- ot speed, breaking short distance records. Cambridge won by lengths.