Challenge

With its customary air of imparting an enormously weighty secret to an annoyingly impatient world, the New York Yacht Club last week announced, in round official style, that it had received a challenge from Britain's Royal Yacht Squadron in behalf of Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith to race for the America's Cup in the summer of 1937. What made the announcement a shade less than breathtaking, even to that microscopic minority of the sporting public which normally gets excited about the America's Cup, was that the news had been unofficially given out in England a month ago, rumored as early as last June.

Main feature of yachting's biggest international event has always been the unsporting controversies that precede, accompany and follow it. Main feature of Skipper Sopwith's challenge was the date he proposed for the first race, July 24. The date suits him because his challenger, Endeavour II, built last winter, has been racing all this summer. It does not suit the New York Yacht Club because it leaves little time to tune up an as yet unbuilt defender next spring. First job of the committee which the Club last week empowered to act on the challenge will be to arrange a not particularly sporting deal, whereby, in return for such favors as permission to have his boat towed across the Atlantic instead of sailing it, Challenger Sopwith will accept a later date.

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