The Olympic Regatta at Henley ended brilliantly on Friday week.
In the final heat of the eight-oared race, the great event of the meeting, the Leander crew met the Belgians, who had previously defeated Cambridge University, and after a splendidly contested struggle beat them decisively by two lengths. As the Belgians had won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley in 1906 and 1907, the contest resolved itself into a battle of the two styles of rowing, and the conclusive victory of Leander has re-established the supremacy of methods which some experts were prepared to abandon in the event of the Belgians winning. The fact that the Leander crew was largely composed of veterans has given rise to some pessimistic comments on the physical degeneracy of the younger genera- tion of amateur oarsmen, but their decadence may be in " form " rather than physique.
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