Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 11, No. 11, September 22nd, 1948

Cross Country

Cross Country

In the N.Z.U. C.C.C. at Christ-church. Clem Hawke won convincingly from R. Rawnsley and Q. Thompson of AUC. over a 6¼ mile course at Cashmere.

The race was run in beautiful weather; it was, if anything, too hot for comfortable running. The course, a 2-lap one, was mostly flat, but the three hills almost proved too much for some competitors on the second time round. From the start, the course was along 200 yards of road, a climb for a further 200 yards, into a paddock and down to the flat again; then, almost immediately, the toughest hill of the lot. Another small hill, then on to a road for 400 yards, back into the paddocks, across the road once again, more paddocks, another ¼-mile of road, and then round for the second lap! Apart from any rough country, there were some 26 obstacles, in the form of gates and fences, to be negotiated.

Hawke was in the lead at the first fence and, moving with his usual effortless stride, steadily drew away from the rest of the field to win by 400 yards in 37min 58sec.

The Dixon Trophy for the teams' race and the Shackleford Cup for the N.I. teams' race went to AUC and the Carmalu Jones Cup for the S.I. teams' race went to OU. '

A second Vic. runner who deserves mention is Peter ("Blondle") Whittle. Pete has been running very well indeed this season and his performance at Christchurch was no exception. He quickly moved up and hung on all the way, finishing in sixth place in a field of 40 runners.

Eleventh place went to John Maw-son; Paul Keesing, Max Clift, Steve Osborne (their first year in N.Z.U.) and Dee Kelly all ran well and held quite good positions at the finish—better than those gained by our team in last year's N.Z.U. The one" spot of really bad luck which we had this year occurred when Johnny Helden, one of our most experienced runners, was attacked by stomach trouble just before the race. It is to his great credit that he carried on where many others would have been tempted to drop out and we hope that he will be in good shape again when the Wellington-Masterton relay comes round.