Let’s be honest, most people never venture further than
Europe. When the cheap spirit of wanderlust awakens, a group trip
(courtesy of Easyjet) to the sun-kissed regions of Spain soon
cures the travel-bug. Often the holy trinity of boozy paradises
– Majorca, Minorca and Malaga – in association with
Club so and so, adequately nourish the Joepublic soul with the
sublime necessities of sand, sea, sex and more sex. Meanwhile Africa merely registers as that place where Bob
Geldof “did his bit for us, for those skinny kids”.
Often the seasonal destination of many a “Hoorah Henry”
and the hutbuilding wealthy Gap year student, “cos laahk yah
know, I raahlly wanna help the children”, Africa remains
distant and inaccessible to most. A continent that conjures up
images of expense, famine, disease and poverty couldn’t
really be a holiday destination for the masses, could it? Lonely
Planet’s excellent new travel guide, Africa on a Shoestring
aims to dispel the miasma of thought surrounding the continent. A mixture of social comment, history, practical information
and observational humour, this sturdy tome is an invaluable guide
for any budgetconscious traveller aiming to explore the
impressive diversity of Africa. From the Roman and Pharaonic
temples of the Maghreb (North Africa), to the spicy charm of the
East, the platelicking cuisine of the West and right down to the
jaw-droppingly inspiring natural sites of Southern Africa, any
adventurer on a tight budget can experience the continent to its
fullest, particularly students suffering from the monstrous
after-effects of a student loan. The emphasis is on
“shoestring” and so each page is conceived with this
concern in mind; the helpful itineraries to plan budget
backpacking around specific regions of Africa, from North to
South, “the Maghreb Meander” to “French
Footsteps”, must be looked at. With this endlessly useful
one-stop reference guide, you can’t really go wrong. Lonely
Planet adds yet another jewel to backpacking culture.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

A confession: although On The Road is a fun read, I found that it never quite lived up to its reputation. The idea behind it all is great – drugs, rebelliousness, drink, sex and freedom – perfect ingredients for an adolescent’s ideal ofescape from home and the oldsters. It’s just that, well, it all got a bit samey after a while – they go off on a road trip, drive around a bit and come on back home.
Jim Dodge’s Not Fade Away, reissued by Canongate, touches on the same territory, but with a whole chunk more gusto. Remember the Big Bopper? No, why should you, or indeed anyone born in the last 25 years. He was an old-school Rock and Roll singer, whose biggest hit was ‘Chantilly Lace’ (first line, “HELLOOOOO Baybeeeeee”). This might make sense in a minute or two. Not Fade Away follows ‘Floorboard’ George Gastin (“when it comes to whipping it down the road I’m right up there with the best. Never been in a wrech that wasn’t on purpose”), a grizzled old Beat who drives around in an old tow up truck, ‘The Ghost’. He picks up one unfortunate, and tells him the tale of his ‘Pilgrimage’.
Going back many years to his youth, he recounts his days as a near-bum, listening to jazz, watching beautiful women, living with crooks and wasters. He finds himself employed by the local hoodlum, ‘Scumball’, to write off cars for insurance claims. It’s all a lot of fun until he’s asked to write off a pristine ’59 Cadillac. All this while being pursued by severely pissed-off violent gangsters, fuelled by Benzedrine and beer. Oh, and some LSD.
Dodge’s writing is seriously fun; heaps of enthusiasm and lashings of atmosphere. Sadly I’ve never seen jazz the way he describes it – deep, dark and oh so dirty. Nor have I driven a soft-top classic car down those huge American highways. But thus book makes me want to seek out the seediest jazz joint in Cowley, take a crowbar to a powerful-looking car, and drive all the way to Mexico. It’s a big swirling trip of legendary musicians, drivers, roads and weird people. Try it, you might like it.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

The quality of the football at the opening rounds of the
Cuppers 5-a-side last Wednesday mirrored the weather: dull, with
occasional bright spells. In an event which rewards discipline,
solidity and directness, plus the odd sprinkling of flair, few
teams truly shone in the plush surroundings of the Iffley Road
Sports Complex. First up were St Hugh’s B team, deservedly triumphing
over their supposed superiors, a combined Merton and Mansfield A
side. Mark Heath’s early penalty decided the game, the more
direct approach of Hugh’s countering the cultured yet
ineffective style of the opposition. This match set the agenda
for the days’ play, teams being consistently caught out by
the regulation forbidding defenders entering their own penalty
box. Queen’s B also caused a shock. Having been 2-0 down at
halftime, they eventually triumphed 3-2 over Teddy Hall A. The
talented Eckersley, with his delicate dribbling skills and
consummate passing, scored one and set up the other to put Teddy
Hall in complete control. Yet in the secondhalf, with Eckersley
tiring, Teddy Hall faded alarmingly, allowing a spirited
Queen’s fight-back with three goals, shared between
Sutcliffe and Pearson, putting the underdogs through. On the eve of the 50th Anniversary of the breaking of the
four-minute mile, not many individuals were showing the
consistency and tenacity that were so key to Sir Roger
Bannister’s remarkable achievement, also at Iffley Road. Exeter A produced a similar comeback to Queen’s B, with
twosecond half penalties from Paul Coles sealing the game after
Lennon had given Balliol A the lead. Though Balliol had the
better of the possession, the Exeter keeper, Taylor, wearing a
Blackburn Rovers kit, was rarely forced to display Brad
Friedelesque reflexes in a dull game. Teddy Hall B team, resplendent in a vivid red-and-yellow
strip, completed a resounding victory over a poor Lincoln B side
bedecked in a slightly more conservative and tasteful sky blue
kit. The excellent Atkinson volleyed the first goal, with Kelly
twice finishing well beyond the vociferous, though
under-protected, Lincoln ’keeper to seal a 3-0 victory. The tournament continues, and over the next few weeks the
action promises to heat up, though the Thursday rounds of the
tournament were postponed due to the celebrations of Sir
Roger’s momentous run.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

Three current Oxford students competed at the opening World
Cup Regatta at Poznan, the first chance that those boats heading
to the Olympics in August had to test their speed against serious
competition. For the British squad, it was also a chance to see whether the
reshuffles brought in by Jürgen Grobler had worked. In the
absence of the top British coxless pair due to illness,
Wolfson’s Peter Reed and Christ Church’s David
Livingston raced creditably as their replacements, finishing
fifth in the B final. Christ Church’s other Olympic hopeful, Robin
Bourne-Taylor, would have been more disappointed with the fifth
place achieved by the VIII in the final, seen as a set back
compared to the bronze medal achieved at the World Championships
in Milan last year. This result means that yet more reshuffles are possible in the
VIII, especially with the strong performance of former Keble
student Ed Coode. Coode, previously dropped from the VIII after a
poor showing at GB trials, raced to a gold medal in the coxless
four after substituting for the injured Olympian James Cracknell.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

Oxford’s karting team enjoyed their most successful
season so far in the highly competitive British University
Karting Championship, beating the Tabs in five out of six rounds. The championship, which visits the best karting tracks in the
country and uses two-stroke karts capable of 85mph and 0-60 in 4
seconds, attracts competitors with a wealth of professional
motorsport experience including Le Mans 24Hr, GT racing, Formula
3 and even the winner of the Channel 5 reality TV show ‘Be A
Grand Prix Driver’. With drivers of this standard, Oxford
were expecting a tough season; however on a number of occasions
they showed the pace and talent to run near the front of the 48
four-driver teams from 25 universities competing. Bayford Meadows in Kent was the venue for the opening round,
and the team struggled for consistency, messing up three of the
four individual races with only the writer scoring a decent
result in 14th. Round 2 at Rye House, Hertfordshire brought
further ill luck, as three of the team were given black flags and
penalties after collisions with other drivers. The Championship then moved to Warden Law near Sunderland for
rounds 3 and 4, and local boy Adam Craig proved the star. He
raced away into the lead of his first race, leaving all the pros
behind – until with just two laps to go he spun, dropping to
5th – still a great result. He followed that up with
Oxford’s first ever podium in 2nd in his other race – a
superb performance. Clay Pigeon in Dorset rounded off the season by hosting the
final two rounds in Noughth week. The team still had some work to
do to ensure victory over Cambridge, and once again the 30 minute
individual races proved tricky despite the writer’s best
ever result in 9th place, with the other drivers each having
problems. That left two one-hour pair races, and Marcus Haggers
and James Brown did a brilliant job to finish 12th in theirs,
despite spinning once and having started last on the grid, they
slashed their way relentlessly through the field. The other two drivers then scored a brilliant 7th place in the
final race of the season, keeping pace with the professionals all
the way to conclude the team’s best ever day and season in
the championship. The victory over Cambridge was well-deserved
and provides great expectation for the Varsity Karting race.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

Bannister, Chataway and Brasher; the four-minute-mile was
something of a team achievement; without his pace makers the good
doctor might never have breasted the tape in time. Had he been
just a fraction slower a foreigner would have taken the plaudits
that Bannister now laps up; there might have been no honours from
a grateful Empire, and no celebration fifty years on at
Oxford’s slightly less famous Iffley Road athletics track. Perhaps there would have been no subsequent British obsession
with middle distance running – an obsession which spawned
the great Cram, Coe and Ovett. Bannister, as he would certainly
be the first to acknowledge, owes his pacemakers a great deal. In fact, so much individual success is actually the result of
teamwork; the result of minions sacrificing themselves for the
good of their superiors. Lance Armstrong, that modern day hero,
is literally pulled up those steep Alpine climbs by his team
mates most of whom will have to drop out because of the sheer
exhaustion of breaking the still air in front of their leader;
Paula Radcliffe’s amazing London marathon records have been
aided by (male) pacemakers and Michael Schumacher’s
victories have so often come at the expense of his team-mates. Of course these three are among the most talented sportsmen
and women of this, or indeed any other, generation. It is this
talent that assures them of their greatness. Even the greatest,
though, have to rely on others from time to time. Individual
records are hardly ever so simple a feat as we are afterwards led
to believe by the historians eager to dramatise events and
glorify names – if it wasn’t you crossing the line then
you hardly count, it seems. At a time when everyone (us included) is quite rightly singing
the praises of Bannister, Cherwell asks that everyone takes a
minute or four to remember those without whom it quite literally
wouldn’t have been possible – Chataway, Brasher and all
your like: we salute you.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

1954’s Cherwell was amongst the first to learn that
Iffley Road would see Roger Bannister attempt to run the elusive
four-minute mile. During secret training in April Bannister ran a
three minute three-quarter mile and became convinced that the
impossible could be done; he alerted Oxford University Athletics
Club officials, who informed Cherwell staff that an attempt would
be made but asked that the preview be ‘guarded’. On 4th
May the newspaper previewed the soon to be famous match under the
ambiguous headline ‘Records May Go’, with the prophetic
words “with Bannister, Chataway and Brasher in the field
something very, very fast may be expected.” One week later Bannister’s photo adorned the front page;
the headline declaring him to be ‘Alone in the World’;
the main headline, though, was devoted to the attempts to raise
signatures for an ‘H-Bomb Petition’. On the back page
of Cherwell, the newspaper’s athletics correspondent offered
a behind the scenes exclusive on the breaking of “one of the
few athletic records which catches the public imagination.” The report’s first line betrays the excitement all felt
at the achievement: “Five days ago Roger Bannister M.A.,
B.Sc., Oxon, became the first man to run one mile in less than
four minutes.” However, it shows too just how close
Bannister came to calling off his attempt to run into history:
“Earlier in the day Bannister had dismissed his plans for a
record attempt, and Chataway had expressed his wishes to run in
the Two Miles”. The men were persuaded to continue by George
Truelove who, Cherwell wrote, “told them all to ‘have a
go’” and, no doubt, by the realisation that the moment
was ripe for the taking; with so many athletes vying for the
honour of being the first to run the four-minute-mile a delay
might have proved fatal. Still, it was only at 5.55pm that
Bannister committed to the run. Cherwell’s report acknowledged Brasher’s early
attempts to set the pace saying that “the greatest
credit” was due to him, though his “valiant first half
mile was almost forgotten by the end of the race”. Of Chataway the praise is equally fulsome, despite noting that
“the phenomenal first quarter mile led to the third lap, at
62 secs, being the slowest of the race”. Bannister, though,
“burnt himself out in a superhuman effort over the last 330
yards” and broke through the line into history. Hugh Murray, the Sports Editor of Cherwell, was quick to have
a word with the hero of the day who declared himself “very
pleased to have done this mile here at Iffley Road, for it was
here that I ran my first mile” – the report notes that
“in fact that mile was a very poor run in the
Freshmen’s Sports, October 1947 when the track was
constructed three laps to the mile.” It was Bannister who in one of numerous legacies he was to
leave the University secured the approval for a “normal
size…cinder track”, which the paper proudly points out
‘is now one of the best in the country. Perhaps Chataway, an ex- President of Oxford University
Athletic’s Club, best summed up the spirit of jubilation at
Iffley Road by declaring to a listening Cherwell reporter that
the triumphant runners were “now off to find a night
club.” One of Britain’s greatest ever sporting
achievements being celebrated in Filth or Park End is perhaps not
the most romantic of images but certainly marks it out as a
quintessentially Oxford moment.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

Oxford University Athletics Club went back in time on Thursday
to relive the momentous occasion when Sir Roger Bannister, then a
medical student in Oxford, became the first man to run a mile in
under four minutes, a feat that had been regarded by experts as
beyond human limitation. Fifty years after breaking this barrier, Sir Roger returned to
Iffley Road for the anniversary match between the Oxford
University athletics team and the Amateur Athletics Association
U23 team, with some guest competitors including Sonia
O’Sullivan and John Mayock. The events on the track dominated the day, beginning with the
men’s 110m hurdles. Despite the fact that there were only
two competitors, Richard Baderin swept past the line in 14.9
seconds. The only victory for Oxford came in the men’s 200m
where Oxford alumnus, Finlay Wright ran an impressive 22.17
seconds, with Toleme Ezekiel finishing in 23.06 seconds. Both men
also performed well in the 100m. In the women’s races, there were good efforts in both
sprints from Helen Edmundson, who came second in both the 100m
and 200m, and Katy Whear, who came third in the 100m and fourth
in the 200m. The placings were similar in the 400m – Sophie
Scamps, Lizzie Braithwaite and Katherine Sams finished second,
third and fourth respectively. In the men’s race, Jonan Boto
finished strongly in 49.86 seconds to take third place, followed
by Robert Lawton, Michael Lokale and Chris Wright. The familiar voice of BBC commentator Paul Dickenson also kept
spectators informed about the progress of the field events. In
the shot putt, Oxford’s Stephen McCauley came third with a
Blues distance of 14.03m, while Tom Hayman, Jenny Duff, Olivia
Reade and Rota Vavilova all putted well too. The high jump was
more closely contested, with Sean Gourley and Oliver Card jumping
1m85 and 1m80 respectively; in the women’s event Ailsa
Wallace cleared 1m65, followed by Danielle Fidge jumping 1m60. The elite mile races formed the highlight of the competition.
The women’s race was won convincingly, and unsurprisingly,
by guest star Sonia O’Sullivan in 4:27.79. Oxford’s
representatives, Emily Crowley and Clare Martin, finished in
fifth and sixth places. The gun for the men’s race was fired at 6pm –
exactly the same time as the race began 50 years ago, and
Bannister rang the bell used in the historic 1954 race to signal
one lap to go. The race was won by Craig Mottram of Australia in
3:56.64, a new track record and a time which, in 1954, would have
beaten Bannister into second place. Notable performances were
also put in by OUAC captain, Fraser Thompson in 4:07.88, and Nick
Talbot in 4:12.53. Since Sir Roger broke the fourminute barrier with a time of
3:59.4, nearly 1000 athletes from 60 countries have followed in
his footsteps. Perhaps this is why Sir Roger remains so modest about his
accomplishment, “None of my athletics was my greatest
achievement of my life”, he said. “My medical work has
been my achievement, and my family.” His balanced approach
remains an inspiration to aspiring sportsmen worldwide.ARCHIVE: 2nd week TT 2004 

An Oxford student may lose his eye following a violently
assault on Friday night at the Corpus Christi Ball. The victim
sustained serious injuries which may leave him partially blind. An American man, not thought to be a member of the university,
has been charged in relation to the incident, and has since been
released on bail. Ilya Zarembsky, a 23-year-old man from Massachusetts, was
charged on Saturday with causing Grievous Bodily Harm. He
appeared at Oxford Magistrates’ Court on Monday 3 May where
he was bailed to re-appear on 17 May. Stuart Bremner, studying for an MBA at Templeton College, was
punched in the face three times in the bar area of the main quad
at the ball. After treatment by a St John’s Ambulance team,
he was taken to the John Radcliffe hospital before being
transferred to the Radcliffe Infirmary where emergency surgery
was performed to remove part of his iris. It is as yet unclear whether he has completely lost sight in
the eye in question, but doctors have predicted that he may
regain only 60% of his vision “at best.” The incident took place at 2am after the two men, thought to
be previously unknown to each other, began a conversation whilst
queuing for drinks. The porters at the College and eleven hired security officials
then detained a man at the instruction of the College Dean while
the police were called. They were unable to attend, telling the College they were
“too busy” at the time. After a second unsuccessful attempt was made to summon them,
college authorities decided that they would have to let their
detainee go. A suspect was contacted by Oxford Police the next day, through
a member of Corpus, whose guest he was at the time. The organizers of the ball refused to comment on the incident,
following an email sent to all members of the College by the Dean
forbidding them from talking to members of the press about the
incident. The Police, however, are also having problems finding
eyewitnesses to the incident but will be continuing their
investigation into the assault. Many people at the ball, for which they had paid the princely
sum of £50, were completely unaware that the incident had
occured and the rest of the evening passed relatively
uneventfully. As the man is still awaiting trial, Cherwell is unable to
reveal further details of the allegations.ARCHIVE: 1st week TT 2004