Records Are Not Everything

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 8 (Supplement)

Records Are Not Everything

(By A.J.R.)

FROM time to time we read of some fresh athletic record being broken,

some new boundary 6et to the limits of physical ability. Someone jumps an inch higher, or two inches farther, or runs a mile in a second less, than it has ever been run before, or else the cricket ball is hurled a few paces further. At each occurrence our sporting papers go into eulogies, especially if the record breaker happens to be a New Zealander. They seem to take it as proof positive that the athletic world is getting better because in some ways it is undoubtedly getting bigger.

What Is tTie true aim of athletics? If it is just the breaking of records we might do far better by calling in biologists instead of trainers. Within a generation or two they might be able to breed men capable of doubling or halving the existing records. They have done it successfully with animals, and there is no reason to believe that they should not be able to repeat it with men. But the true aim of athletics is not record breaking. Every athlete who develops one part of his body at the expense of another is retarding the cult. Hi« proper aim should be the better co-ordination of brain and body, and the acquiring of grace and poise, lesides speed and strength. Year after year in New Zealand we are training athletes with the sol.j object of breaking records. Is it our intention to develop into a nation of physical and mental super-specialists, of over-developed arm men, leg men, chest men and brain men? A community of super-specialists would be unique. It would show u* to what length particular kinds of dexterity could be carried— but it Would break down pitifully whea its inter-dependence was damaged. Periodically we send our Olympic contingents overseas. When they break records we say they are advancing New Zealand's prestige. When they do not we wonder whether our country is declining. The original motive of the Olympic games was far different, and it seems a pity that it cannot be revived. There was always the incentive to win, but it was not allowed to develop into a fetish. Contestants were expected to

show poise as well as swiftness, grace a« well as usefulness. Clumsy, ungainly athletes were hissed, and generally debarred from prizewinning. If the people of New Zealand were to concentrate upon sending to the Olympi" games men thoroughly balanced and physically fit in the fullest sense of the word instead of searching for specialists, they would be giving themselves a far greater advantage and would do more good than can possibly be done by the breaking of records.

Throughout our national outlook there pervades this inane idea of record-break-ing. The best worker is considered the one who shows the highest tally, the best educated man the nearest approach to a walking encyclopedia. We seem to forget that an individual who may be very useful to the public in one way, because of his specialised abilities, may be very dangerous in another, on account of his limitations.