Torrents of Spring

It turned out to be a drenching, misty Saturday--but the British are used to soggy race tracks and that sort of jolly boating weather. Of the 40 million men, women & children in England, over two million spent the afternoon getting wet for sport's sake.

Britain's midweek sport ban, designed to eliminate the temptations that lure workers from their jobs, had forced two of the year's biggest events into a single Saturday. At Aintree (just north of Liverpool), the 4 1/2-mile steeplechase course, toughest in the world, was a quagmire. As if there were not already enough obstacles on the Grand National Steeplechase (which determines the Irish Sweepstakes winners), nature had added a few more: first frozen ground, then floods. The odds on strongly backed Bricett* shot up to 40-1 after a training injury.

Lough Conn, a 33-to-1 shot from Ireland, led most of the way, as he had last year until he fell at treacherous Becher's Brook. At the last few jumps, up moved Caughoo, 100-to-1 (202 1/2-to-1 on the tote), an Irish eight-year-old with a jockey who had never ridden the Aintree course before. Caughoo (who cost Dublin Jeweler J. J. McDowell $200 as an unbroken juvenile) finished 20 lengths out front. The fog was so thick that most of the 300,000 in the crowd had to read about the race in the papers.

The rest of Britain's besoaked sports fans were either watching rugby games and greyhound races, or among the 500,000 who lined the dangerously high Thames for the Oxford-Cambridge crew race. No one expected any record time for this event. Even if both boats stayed afloat (both sank in a memorable race in 1912), river officials were afraid that the soggy Thames banks might collapse, dumping the crowds in. But Cambridge, using its weight advantage of 8 Ibs. per man in bucking the flood waters, moved ahead in the first dozen strokes with a beat of 37 a minute, stayed ahead the whole way, won by ten lengths. At the finish the Oxonians looked done in, the Cantabrigians fresh enough for another race. Time: 23 min. 1 sec.--slowest since 1871.

* Among the backers of Bricett (who failed to finish): the Reverend J. S. Clarke, vicar of St. Barnabas Church, Plymouth, who advised his congregation to put a bob (no more) on the race. He added: "Though betting is a mug's game, to say that he who puts a shilling on the National is morally wrong is probably not true." Suggested the U.S. magazine The Blood-Horse: why doesn't Parson Clarke call his next sermon "Blessed Are the Pacemakers?"

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