AMERICAN ATHLETES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 50, 28 February 1923, Page 7

AMERICAN ATHLETES.

WHY THEY WIN.

COACHING AND TRAINING THE KEY.

WATCHING THE YOUNG FOR PROBABLE CHAMPIONS.

At the present time the United States has about as effective a monopoly on the world's athletic championships as 6ht. has on its gold supply, writes "An Englishman" in the "New York Times." We have grown used to her supremacy on, the track, in the swimming pool, and in the boxing ring. But the last few years have registered many striking victories for this country in other fields of sporting contest. "To quote some obvious examples, America has made successful invasions into fields which Great Britain regarded as peculiarly her own, as golf, rowing, and polo. What is the reason for it. We may dismiss the facile theory of a racial superiority. For, after all, is not America made up of the peoples whom she is now; beating so easily? The causes lie deeper than that. Of course, us a patriotic son of the "tight little island," I should like to ascribe it all to a matter of comparative size. A country of 110,000,000 population ought to win almost three times as many championships as a country of 40,000,000 population—which is about the ratio of American to English leaderships in the sporting records. But is that alibi tenable for the British or any other of America's opponents ? I am afraid not. There is undoubtedly a real advantage in size, and it is a factor which enters into the question under consideration. This country has a larger Teserve on which to draw for potential prowess than any other which engages in international athletic competitions. But I doubt whether there are ..actually many more American than Englishmen —or at any rate Britons—who personally engage in athletic sports of, one kind or another. There is a woful number of Americans who restrict their ■ participation in the manly exercises; pretty closely to the bleachers or the .porting pages. Forgetting size, what should we next consider! Climate seems naturally to follow on population. And American weather does not smile in kindly fashion on athletic endeavours. Barring football —which, owing to diversity of rules, is not yet an international sport for, this country—no major game is seriously handicapped by a short season. The American track man has a much larger ; 1 slice of the year in which to warm up for record-breaking performances than his 1 European rival. .-■';' But this, again, isn't the final explanation. In boxing, for instance, climate doesn't count for much. And for golf the I British Isles enjoy a better climate than tile United States. There it is an all-year-round game for everybody, but here only, the'very wealthy and the professionals can go south to play during the winter. I think it is still true that the general level of the game is better on the other side than it is here; but by the way in which the leading American ■ pros.-have gained on the British masters daring the last few years I don't think : ft will be long before America will be in position to send over to England a team of a hundred players which would be as successful as a team of six would be • ' .- ;a CLIMATE OKE REASON. ' The most we can say about climate differences is that athletes are undoubtedly favoured over here by the dry, bracing climate, although it is dangerous to generalise even to that extent about a , country which stretches through so many degrees of latitude and longitude. I am afraid that her rivals will have to look • farther than the barometer for a satisfactory excuse to explain the concentration of athletic laurels in American club houses. And the American abroad seems to; be able to overcome the disadvantages of European weather pretty successfully. us try again. What other advan- . tages has America over her oompetiv torsT Can it be the comparative im- " fflimity from the losses of the war. The athletic youth or the United States re- | (ponded genrously to their country's summons, but by the nature of America's delayed entry into the fighting, they iere spared the heavy losses which /the other combatant nations Buffered. ■Where America mourns her Hobey Baker, England and France and Italy «nd the British Dominions—and the . Central Powers, too—presuroaibly miss -dozens of champions. But America's, supremacy was well founded before the .War. And one does not observe that Holland, Spain, Sweden, and other countries which were free from the ravages - of the contest have made any appreciable advance in the athletic federation t of the world since 1914. Finland, which went through not only the war, but revolution as well, has made extraordinary progress. ' So the war seems to take with other considerations we have had under notice. Jt fits into the picture, ibut it is not the whole story. ~ . r What then? Money? Here it seems to mc that we are getting warmer. America is wealthy—even though you and I personally may not seem to get N much of that wealth. There are more ' People here who can afford to pay bi__ prices to gee athletic contests than anywhere else in the world. Thus the priws 'for the victors are larger. And it needs not charts to prove that the larger the pnzes. the bigger the crowd of con*testants; nor need we invoke Einstein's relativity to show mathematically that the larger the field the bigger the chance Ui * rea ' cna mpion emerging from tbe I think this undoubtedly explains in Urge measure 'the supremacy . of the • -'j*f, rican professional boxer. And 1 Gont confine this explanation to the few The prodigious purses Y*ich the occasional Dempseys carry off xroaii vacant lots outstrip anything that ♦_ • offered in Europe, ibut even over . tnere the real headliners earn good »oney with a right swing to the jaw. "Hat I have jn mdnd now is the average :,«um which the ordinary professional! 8«t8 for his day-in-day-out work. It is I «nuideraibly larger than the man of •quivalent rank can get in Europe or in Australia, which is the only country ** of Euro Pc -nd North America wnere there is any real prize fighting. In boxing, then, the money element , ""*• It is beginning to tell in golf. °°rae of the American pros, must be n "ng income tax reports which would *"c successful business men look like paupers—with their club salaries, their enormous fees for lessons, their money J""* 8 * wd the sums they can make by -~._., ™ a °rsing putters, advertising balls, and t i Dg testimon ials for golf shoes. The i ni -° f tlle * olf pro ' toward America * obvious, and more and more the am*tio_ young player from England and

Scotland and France will be attracted 1 to this side of the Atlantic, with marked effects on the American preponderance :n the sport. j REAL REASON REV_A_BD. j But money doesn't—or shouldn't—eninto amateur games, and the __meri- . can supremacy seems to be even more .marked among the amateurs than among the professionals. What is there, j outside of the points already covered, i that accounts for this? The answer—the I explanation, in large part, of it all —is the American coach.

I Sport here is taken seriously, and from the beginning, from his earliest ' school days, the boy who shows any -igns of athletic excellence is kept under careful observation, given trained assistance, taught how to use his powers ' l to the best advantage, disabused of his faults, built up physically and mentally for his own particular line of sport. There is nothing comparable to tins coaching system in any other country. Let mc quote my own case. I have engaged in most sports, with moderate ability. The only one in which I was I much ahead of the average was swimming, with the derivative game of water polo. I played in my school and university teams. When I came to this '. country T went out to Detroit. I fell under the attention there of Matt Mann, the excellent coach of the Detroit Ath- . letic Club. In a week ne had clipped my time for the hundred yards by a , couple of seconds. Had I stayed under , , his tuition I believe I could have been . i made a good swimmer, in the American 11 sense. At school in England we had a man . I who looked after the pool, who knew a • | little about life saving, and so enjoyed the title of coach; but he had never even '. mastered the crawl stroke, so his ability • to assist his pupils for modern swimj ming can easily be gauged. At college ' the only training we received wag from senior members of the swimming club— themselves undergraduates. It was the same with the football '■ team—no professional coaching, no sys- ■ tematic drills, no scientific building up ' of wind or speed or muscles; only a i little haphazard instruction from old > t players in the team and from teachers, I whose record at the game did not be- ! | tray any particular distinction. Even '. the Oxford and Cambridge crews, thoroughly practised as they are for their ' I annual race, do not have professional ' • assistance at any time. They are under the care of old graduates, who give their ' time voluntarily—time which, as these 1 men are engaged in professions of their ' own, must be comparatively limited. ' Guy Nickalls never gave to liny English crew half the attention that he devoted 1 1 to his rowing charges each year after I he had come over here. II In' fact, the only sport in which the ' j English amateur regularly has systematic training from a professional coach •'w in cricket. The r__ult is seen when , one of the American cricket teams goes I ;over to England. It is true that few peonle play the game here, and one could hardly expect a handful of Phila- ! delphians and New Yorkers to excel against a nation in which almost everyj body plays it or has played it But even in meeting the minor English teams .the Americans are handicapped. They play a good, .porting game; but they j are untrained, amateurish even, when compared with the second-rate English t players. J Still, even the English cricket coach II isn t a fair comparison with the American football or track trainer. The Englishman only gets about £6 a week, at the most, during a season which does notl last for-half the year, together with a , few tips from his pupils, what he can' make from selling bats and balls and j other equipment for the game, and pos- . | sibly the proceeds of a benefit match in . j which the gate receipts are small. The ( level of intelligence attracted to sucn a ..method of making a livelihood is not ! very great. You do not find men with brains among the English cricket coaches —men comparable in inte'.lectual equip- ' ™ *° fche train *w of this country. There is where money pops up again. The football coach of a big American I college gets a much larger salary than ; the leading Greek professor of a big English college-and in the English colleges .Greek » taken seriously. Obviously athletic coaching ,n this country is going ;to attract better men, considered all round, than it is over there. Equally the difference is going to show in the pupils trained by these men. What has been said about England can be re- ; peated with even more emphasis of Conhundrd paid coaches over here there are >_ti n nent C BntlSh ISIC and one - j PROOF EASY TO FIND, i If evidence is' needed to support my position, let us consider the running track. At the shortest distances, where the margin of difference must be small careful training in starting and in the dash at t ( he finish come out predominantly. And in the sprint* the United , States always defeats Great Britain. In I the middle distances, where natural running ability has a greater chance to excel in spite of lack of coaching, Great Britain is at least the equal of the United States. But in the field events where coaching and training are paramount, where the most careful attention is given to methods in this country, while the technique of the different events is almost entirely ignored in Great Britain, America always sweeps the boards. In almost nine cases out of ten the field events in the annual OxfordCambridsre sports recently have been won by American Rhodes scholars at Oxford or stray Yankees at Cambridge. American coaches have insisted on the better material equipment enjoyed by the athlete of the country. The American runner has indoor tracks on which to practice and keep fit during the winter. Such things do not exist in Europe. Here, again, every boat club seems to have its rowing machine— practically unknown on the other side. Such elaborations of instruction as the use of moving pictures, with the motion slowed down to emphasise all the faults or excellences of the athletes' action— commonplaces of training in this country—are unheard of elsewhere. j America catches its athletes early. • By careful observation you see in what line one is going to shine. From that point, through strenuous training and systematised competitions, he is carried forward step by «tep. He is encouraged by far greater publicity than he could get in other countries. And in some rase« there is no doubt that he is spurred on by the knowleage that real pre-eminence will assure him a good living—when he withdraws from amateur sports, and Himself becomes a coach. Contrast this with the athlete's progress in other countries. Competition ; s haphazard. The coaching is amateurish. The boy's development is left to himself, where it is checked and misguided by others. For instance, tennis is still under the ban in the great

English private schools, whence most of my country's great athletes come. Cricket is their traditional summer game, and many a good tennis player is deprived of the essential early practice, and forced to take part instead in a game which he may not at all enjoy, and for which he is not fitted. The results are shown each year at Wimbledon and in the records of the Davia Cup. And in most of the schools of the Continent there are no organised athletic sports.

The Englishman defends his methods by charging the American coaching system with turning sport into a business. There is a modicum of truth in this. The real end of good sportsmanship is sometimes lost to sight in the pursuit of a record of the .maintenance of an unbroken list of victories. But, on the whole, the higher the level of the competition, the greater the skill of the participants in a sport, the more they should get out of it. The good golfer gets an infinitely greater thrill from his game through the perfect co-ordination of eye and muscle than the duffer who foozles and slices, and misputts around in 100. Granted that professional sport be free from crookedness, that amateur sport be free from professionalism, the competitors' pleasure in it will vary with the care of their training and the level of their skill.

Training, then, is the key to it all. If the rest of the world wants seriously to dispute the athletic field with America it must revise its training systems or, rather, install training systems where none exist to-day. They must copy the careful, scientific methods of preparation for the different sports worked out in this country. They must hire intelligent men, who will require good salaries, to devise newer and better methods than the Americans have yet developed.

But they will not do so. In the first place, they are too conservative. In the second, tbey haven't got the money. And so America will continue to pile championship on championship until she has made a complete corner of all available prizes, and European nations will be .able to say that they have paid off their war debts in the cups and medals contributed to American invaders of their athletic fields.