SCIENTIFIC SPORT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3360, 15 August 1927, Page 7

SCIENTIFIC SPORT.

(By Professor A. M. Low.) Every Englishman is fond of sport, and to tell a man that he is not a sportsman is to insult him. y Then what do we mean by sport? Do we mean a game of chance in which the brain and muscles are tested? If so, why is it that we are doing our best to rule out chance in games and trying to make brain count mox-e than muscle ? The fact is that sport is, at any rate in England, in a transitory stage. The game of chance is past —to-day our tennis courts are perfect, and no firstclass player loses a point because a ball bounces in a spot where a worm lias, chanced to show its bend. The scientific application of chemical fertilisers and worm killers to cricket pitches lias made ft almost impossible lor the bowler to take a wicket by chance, and if a golfer misses a yard putt it is never through a flaw in the green. But on the question of ruling out muscle we are not so decided. There are still enthusiasts for weight-lifting—-although a simple crane would enable them to raise four or five times the record weights with ease. Boat racing is the sport which best shows how our attitude is changing. In the old days the boat race was largely a test of physical strength in the widest sense, including not only muscle, but stamina and breath control. Every year the race, becomes more scientific. We have mechanical devices' for training the rowers, and spend many hours and hundreds of pounds designing a boat which will give the rowers an advantage over their rivals. The race is no longer a test of brawn —if one side has a clever boat designer, although he never goes outside his drawing office, he may win the race! After all, if a test of physical strength is all that is required, the race could be rowed in a gymnasium, with electrical apparatus recording the amount of work done by each crew, i At present we are inconsistent- —we do not allow that sport is a test of muscle, and yet do not allow brain full scope. 1 believe the time come when the race will be rowed in a gymnasium, both sides trying to persuade the umpire that they have won by mass thinking! Looked /at broadly this is only a natural development. Sport was invented primarily as training for warfare, and even to-day, recruits are trained largely by games; which harden their muscles, develop their self-con-trol, and generally fit them for warfare. All our blood sports arc relics of a barbarous age, and they have this disadvantage, that whereas in a barbarous age they were natural, to-day they inflame the lowest and most bestial desires of man —the desires that a “gentleman” tries to control. And blood sports are going out—we hare even got to the stage when public opinion demands their prevention by legislation. To an ordinary decent man it is no longer “sport” to hunt a stag in a wired enclosure, to see his throat cut by a'professional butcher, and to have the smoking blood daubed on his face. . ... If there must be a sport m which there is the element of tho chase, it will be on scientific lines —as the popularity of coursing the mechanical hare has "shown. It is not altogether a sport of chance.'and certainly not one of muscle, but the trainer does have to use his brains, studying the law? of hereditary in breeding his dogs ami bringing science to his aid in training them. The change that is coming oyer our way of thinking is shown in the tact that Britain now loses at sports m which muscles play a big part. Me have taught the world how to play games, but we are now supreme at few of them. Even the championships of such typically British sport as boxing have been taken From us. . But I can imagine the enthusiast saying, surely boxing is a sport in which brain counts more than muscle? 1 ossibly, but if that is the case, why do not boxers merely tap each other instead ot bitting? Pneumatic or electrical gloves eliminate tlie barbarous element in boxing, but they are not used because “fans” like to see a knock-out—like to see muscle triumph over brain—and therefore I say prize-fighting is not going to be a sport of the future. Now while Britain is losing her position in brawn sports, she is still first with sports—real sports—which test tho brain ami imagination. Motor-cycle racing is a sport of the highest order—it shows the triumph of mind over muscle, and illustrates: the great part science plays in sport. Moreover, it is of commercial value, and but for racing there would he no aeroplane engines and no cheap motor-cycles. It is equally thrilling for rider and spectator. It is an extraordinary thing that a man who sits on a stool with a gun firing spreading shot at driven birds a few yards away would call himself a sportsman—a title which he would hesitate in giving to a man managing an engine at 80 or 100 miles an hour. Yet the sportsman who shoots tamo birds is hardly better than tho boy who steals eggs from a nest, while a motorcyclist combines utility with enjoyment and tests his self-control and brain to the utmost Pacing motorists of the future may guide their cars from their rooms, and already devices are being used to do away with the necessity of using strength in steering at high speeds. Peal sport demands a high degree of brain power, ami I have no doubt that in the future we shall think games such as football foolish relics of the past, just as we now regard jousting and tilting at the quintain. Like everything clyo. sport is subject to evolution, and in a scientific ago wo shall have scientific sport. The plea of physical fitness is nothing—a few minutes of mechanically induced exercise every day can keep anyone fit. What most athletes aim at is abnormal development of muscle in an age when hraijn is supposed to count more than muscle. There is a fortune awaiting anyone who can invent scientific games which exorcise the brains as football and cricket exercise the body.