23rd

At Cap Gris Nez, France, last week 22-year-old Thomas Blower, Nottingham factory hand, slathered himself with grease, slid into the chill water of the English Channel. Plowing the waves like a torpedo, he swam eleven miles in five hours, was four miles off the Dover breakwater in nine hours, met a strong southwesterly tide and was three hours covering the next two miles, finally waded ashore between Dover and Folkestone after 13 hr. 29 min. Twenty-third to complete the channel swim, Blower was 2 hr. 45 min. slower than the Bohemian mechanic, Venceslas Spacek, who set the record in 1927, 1 hr. 2 min. faster than the 1926 mark of Manhattan's Gertrude Ederle who was the first woman to swim the Channel.

Miss Ederle, now grown matronly, marked the 11th anniversary of her swim last week at her home in Hempstead, L. I. Said she: "I'm 30 now, an old lady. I don't go swimming any more. I go bathing."

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