GIRLS COLLAPSE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 72, 26 March 1931, Page 12

GIRLS COLLAPSE

STRAIN OF ATHLETICS

SYDNEY CONTROVERSY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 12th March.

The .sensational collapso of two competitors in the 220 yards running event at the New South Wales athletic championship meeting lias caused a renewal of the controversy on the question whether athletics impose too severe a strain on girls. It was at the request of the girls themselves that the 220 yards event was included in the programme. Tho association considered that the distance was too long for girls and that a race of that description was far too strenuous. That view finds support in these incidents. Miss Phyllis Garling collapsed when 100 yards had been covered, and Miss Heather Kennaby with the tape only a few yards away pulled out and fell over the lino exhausted. Doctors who attended the girls wore of tho opinion that tho furlong races were too trying. Then followed an agitation for the deletion of the event from future programmes, and there are many for and against this. In the opinion of three Sydney women doctors, 220 yards is not too great a distance for any woman to iun in a race provided she is properly trained and in normal health. One of them said that the. girls who collapsed on Saturday could not have been properly trained. Of course, exercise beyond the capacity of any individual athlete, man or woman, might cause athlete's heart later on. That was the only likely result in later life, as far as medical science knew. Dr. Marie Hamilton, of the Board of Health, said that medical research into'the effect of strenuous physical exercise on women had not been pursued to any great extent, but sho though that no ill-effects were likely if women were trained properly and the conditions under which they raced were ordinarily favourable. Another member of the Board of Health, Dr. Sandford Morgan, said it was almost impossible to state whether ill-effects were liable from racing because proved theories for and against were almost equal in. number. The winner of the race on Saturday, Miss Clarice Kennedy, one of the most successful women athletes competing in Australia to-day, said that tho whole trouble lay in girls not being properly trained. Any girl prepared in the correct manner for a 220 yards race could see the distance out without suffering any distress. it now remains for the association to decide whether the furlong event is to be retained. The women are bound to clamour for it still.