ALL SPORTS A Weekly Budget

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 205, 18 November 1927, Page 10

ALL SPORTS A Weekly Budget

Now for the winning post—mortem. It seems clear that Dr. Dorothy Logan’s Channel swim was not Strait dinkum. An American athlete claims that a dry-storage battery strapped round his waist increases his speed as a sprinter. Motorists fear that this may lead to an electric pedestrian. 500 Nothing Bookmakers were present at a Yorkshire angling contest recently, when of 760 competitors who fished for four and a-half hours in heavy rain 500 caught nothing. Greyhound racing still has its rivals.

“Down to Tin-Tacks” All sorts of ridiculous stories have been attributed to Dempsey and Tunney. This is the usual froth of the Press agents. But here are two honest and truthful expressions:—Tunney on Dempsey: “Dempsey fought a much better fight than he did a year ago. He was much tougher, punched cleaner and harder, and was faster on his feet. He is a game warrior, and one of the greatest battlers in the history of the ring.” Dempsey on Tunney: “Tunney beat me fair and square. He’s a great fighter and a great champion, and fights clean. I feel sore about the seventh round incident, but it was my own mistake, and I’m not going to appeal.” It must be added that it was not Dempsey who appealed—he was against such action—but his manager, Leo. P. Flynn. A Tip for the Auckland Centre When the Otago Centre of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association included a race for Chinese citizens in its Daylight-Saving Commemoration meeting, it reckoned that it could not possibly have bad luck. But when 13 Chinese entered for the event the wheel spun the other way and the appointed day (Monday last) was one of the wettest of the year and the meeting had to be postponed till next evening. This turned out beautifully fine, and the biggest crowd since the New Zealand championship meeting attended. Whether it was the extra daylight novelty, or the presence of the whippets, or the Chinese or what, is debatable, but over 3,000 people enjoyed a really good programme. Those Slippy Whippets The whippet races at this meeting created a great deal of interest, the speedy little dogs going like the wind and doing the course (a good 120yds), in lOsec or thereabouts each time. They are great hurdlers also. A slippery little black customer named Prince Pelaco was the outstanding flat racer, and his colours (blue and white chequers), became as popular as the almost similar colours of Sir George Clifford. The Chinese race also aroused the crowd to cheers, though the white-shoed and braced-up yellow men were not nearly so fast as the whippets. Indeed, the heat-winners took over 14sec for the 100yds, and their gait suggested “too muchee lice for tea.” The judges in this race made sure of the placed men by rushing out and grabbing them and leading them in. Had they been allowed to mix up before being identified, it would have been “good night,” and food for long days and nights of argument in the mission house and vegetable shop would have been provided. It was to be expected (says Sydney “Bulletin”) that the criticism of the Waratahs by the very superior section of the English press devoted to sport —not “sporting press,” for Heaven’s sake —would make interesting reading. It does. The “Field,” which ponderously reviews the world’s sport from tiger shooting to table tennis, has a few words of reproof to bestow on the “colonials." The idea of the halfback cutting through the broken scrum fills it with such rage and disgust that one suspects he scored a try by doing so, though the move in Rugby is older and more moth-eaten than the “Field” —and that is saying a lot. But we get the real dithyrambics when the “Field” comes to the Australian custom of dressing the touch judges in white sweaters and shorts. The object is to distinguish the officials from the sprinkling of nondescripts who usually haunt a football touchline, but not in this light does the “Field” regard it. No; the hideous lapse from conventionality “failed to meet the views of spectators who abhor anything suggesting the practice of professional. So there, now!