MAN-SPEED

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 82, 5 April 1924, Page 20

MAN-SPEED

TRAVELLING AT EIGHTY MTT/ffS

PER HOUR.

The news from Switzerland that Captain F. A. M. Browning, of the British bobsleigh team entered for the Olympic Winter Games, was travelling at forty miles an hour when his bob overturned no doubt surprised some people who are inclined to take it for granted that to achieve any considerable speed an engine of some kind is essential. Yet, as the above-quoted incident shows, surprisingly high speeds can be reached without the assistance of any mechanical power. The spiinter who covers a hundred yards in ten seconds travels at an average speed of rather more than the twenty miles an hour, says A. W. Allen in the "Daily Mail" legal maximum for a motor-car, and during part of the race must considerably exceed the limit. A man on roller skates can travel still faster, for although the ordinary skater makes the circuit of the rink at only about fourteen miles an hour, the racing expert has been known to attain a speed of about twenty-five miles. Ice skating produces about the same maximum apeed a3 roller skating, but it is estimated that in ice hockey, and over short distances, rather higher speeds are sometimes attained.

Diving can produce very high velocities, with the height from which the dive is made. A diver, for instance, who takes off from a-height of fifty feet is: actually^ travelling at the rate of thirty, eight miles an hour whence enters the water. ■': :■ . >•• ■ '• •' ~? ■

Ihe motor-cyclist whose speedometer registers sixty miles-an hour experiences a glow of pride in his mount, .yefenothmg has been done which has not already been achieved by man-power. - A speed of more than siajty-one miles an hour has been reached on an ordinary racing-pattern, "push" bicycle, and although the "push" cyclist was paced by a motor-cyclist and^ protected from wind pressure, this is not the less a re-, raarkable feat. '.-.■! l

It" is, however,, only when wheels are abandoned that the highest man-power speeds become possible. , In the races on skis ! down the snow-clad mountain slopes .an average speed Of forty-five miles an hour is riot uncommon' even among the lesser' lights of the sport, while the expert will .equal the speed of an express train and cover the distance at sixty miles'an hour. ' . \- . Lugeing oh the specially prepared snow o? cie runs frequently produces a speed' of forty-five miles an hour, and' on thefamous Cresta run a speed •of . eighty miles an hour has been reachijd: