TAKING HOME THE TROPHIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 14, 29 September 1939, Page 42

TAKING HOME THE TROPHIES

Competition Keen In International Sport NGLISH yachtsmen chuckled last month when Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith came down to competition in the 12-metre class at Cowes. Their rivalry started nearly 100 years ago. The new One Hundred Guineas Cup was at stake. The venerable gentlemen of the Royal Yacht Squadron watched in dismay as the U.S. schooner America slapped home on the last tack in Cowes week, 1851, to start a competition which has since cost Englishmen £ 6,000,000 in their unsuccessful attempts to bring the cup back home. Sopwith, Lipton’s successor in the big spending game, failed twice-in 1934 and 1937. The sleek craft he took across the Atlantic raced like a trawler against the better ship and better crew of the defender. But last month Vanderbilt’s 12-metre Vim had to race in strange waters during another Cowes week. Sopwith’s Tomahawk was used to the unruly tidal currents, gusty winds, close off-shore conditions. Hence the chuckles. Tomahawk cut no scalps. In the five races, Vanderbilt won by 37 minutes, 28 seconds, seven minutes, 51 seconds, and eight minutes. The International Challenge Cup joined the America’s cup on the Vanderbilt shelf. The Finnish Trophy Dainty as a Dresden saucer, the Royal Finnish Yacht Club’s golden nautilus shell, first raced for in 1922, last July again left home waters, again to visit America. Norway had it seven times, Sweden six. American yachtsmen defended it in home waters for three consecutive years before 1939. This year, as pleasantly prolific with their dollars as ever, they took it to Helsingfors. George Nichols and his six-metre Goose, out of Manhattan, were the defenders. Again strange waters did not affect the Yankees, and the Goose went home with the gander, leaving France, England, Germany, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark grieving. But yachting was not all. One week in July, a week disastrous for England, Dick Burton beat Johnny Bulls at St. Andrews; but all that England secured from Wimbledon was the booby prize of the women’s title in the All-England Plate. Wooderson

came back from another Mile of the Century to win the Amateur Athletic Association’s mile at White City Stadium, but England was no more happy about that than Southland was happy this month about Taranaki. Australia was thankful for Bromwich and Quist, and New Zealand that Lovelock got out in time. Someone should teach these energetic Americans to play Rugby and cricket. Or should someone? Modern sport is just wonderful. The weapons are not as costly as tanks and aeroplanes, but the compétition’s just as keen,