ATHLETICS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 November 1924, Page 10

ATHLETICS.

Enthusiasts all over the Dominion who have read with unfeigned pleasure of the continued success of Arthur Porritt, the distinguished scholar and athlete who went Home as a Rhodes scholar. He was known to many in Hawera and everyone thought highly of him. A fine unaffected personality he had, which made him popular at school’ and outside in the world .at large. Athletic honours have come thick upon him and his friends feel confident he is taking them in the modest way which was characteristic of him.

The Technical High School boys deserve very great credit for their excllent performances at the athletic meeting last week. They scored well and their victories were very popular. ‘ ‘lt is pleasing to note the great advance that is being made throughout the Dominion in holding both primary and secondary school athletic meetings (states the annual report of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association). Physical fitness is thus obtained; the competitive spirit is engendered and, moreover, many lessons ate unconsciously learned oh the feld of Sport, which help to build up character, and incidentally tend in the direction of the uplifting of the nation.”

THE HISTORY OF GAMES. HOW: SOME POPULAR PASTIMES HAVE DEVELOPED. When asked' why he never played games, Dr. Johnson replied that he had always “contrived to be idle without them” (writes J. B. Sterndale Bennett in John o’ London’s Weekly). The question almost certainly referred to indoor games, for at that time and at his age nobody but a lunatic would have supposed that he would have taken part in athletics. Beyond a certain incontinence in rolling down hills and a juvenile delight in being dragged over the ice by a smaller boy, there is no record of his taking any interest in outdoor sports. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SPORTS. Why should he? The eigtheenth century was not a game-playing century All classes took tlieiy exercise on horseback. In the country the hunt reigned supreme. Games were left to the lower orders (in writing of the time olie can still use those abominable words) and schoolboys. The well-to-do might have a tennis or fives court in their grounds, perhaps patronise, even play in, a local cricket match. Football was still a game for apprentices, country louts, and again schoolboys. It was played as we know through the centuries against many prohibition in the streets and the fields —a rough lawless game, more “a bloodie and murthering practice than felowlie sport or pastime.”

However ancient their origins, most of our popular games date back only to the athletic revival of the nineteenth century As an instance —football.Not till the foundation of the Football Association Union in 1871 can the two games we know to-day be said to have taken legal shape. football. It is interesting to speculate how the two games came to be divided. During the seventeenth century, probably ?' v!n g to . the Puritan movement, football declined in town and country, but it was still kept alive in the schools. Ihe form played probably depended on the nature of til© playground. At Rugby, for instance, the old form of collaring, tackling, and carrying the ball could he indulged in with impunity. for the playground was a field. At other schools, where the playground was gravelled or flagged, safety dictated that the ball should be dribbled. It seems reasonable to suppose that this simple fact dictated the-. division for the revival of football in the nineteenth century was largely inspired by old bovs’ ” football clubs CRICKET AND TENNIS. Cricket is a game of great antiquity —though its organisation and literature are comparatively recent date, there is a reference to the playing of ciicket at Guildford in the sixteenth

century, and among the earliest matches of which the scores have been preserved is one between Kent and All England at the Artillery Ground, Finsbury, in. 1746. Organised county clubs, however, of which the first was Surrey, in 1845, were not formed till the latter half of the nineteenth century. The' literature of cricket is not of ancient date. The earliest printed instructions on how to play the game are generally believed to be those of John Nyren (b, 1746) and Lambert (b. 1779). The game which was destined to eclipse almost all others in universal popularity, lawn tennis, was not founded until 1874. Its invention was ascribed to Major Wingfield, who is said to have based his game on a mixture of the classic tennis and Badminton. Some kind of tennis was played in the fosses of French castles in the fourteenth century. It was populai for many hundreds Of years, but perhaps reached its zenith in Europe under Louis XIV. The famous, tennis court at Versailles was the scene of more famous incidents than the games which were played in it. A POPULAR PASTIME. Major Wingfield’s game, though it was the same in principle as the lawn tennis of to-day, has changed in mam details. The net used was higher, sft at the sides and 4ft in the middle, as against 3ft 6in at the sides and 3ft in the middle. The game was much slow, er, hence probably the sneers of the older generation at its “effeminacy” and the steady opposition to its introduction into the schools. When racquets became more highly strung and balls more' lively, the " service line brought nearer the net by sft, the game naturally became very much swifter. With its swiftness increased its popularity. It has taken only fifty years for it to spread through Europe and all civilised countries, in which there can bp scarcely a town or villiage which has not got its lawn tenniscourt. The championships at Wimbledon testify to this international character, which must be. unique in the history of games. ?. ROYAL AND ANCIENT.

Golf, the Royal and Ancient game, became the obession of the well-to-do during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was then that most of the famous English courses were constructed. An old Scottish game, it was a Scottish King James 1., who first introduced it to his English subjects at Blackheath, but it took a few more centuries to make it popular. Reviewing.the subject, it seems that nearly all the favourite games of today were either revived or invented, and those that were revived were nearly all revived to some extent during the Victorian athletic renaissance. The last fifty years have seen, too, considerable changes in indoor games. The most notable example is the almost complete eclipse of whist in favour of bridge, which* it . its turn, has given way to “auction.” Bridge came from the East and as far as its popularity in this country is concerned, is not more than about thirty years old. It was at oitfe time called Russian whist, and appears to have been introduced by English officials returning from their Eastern stations. No othtr indoor card game (except its variant, auction bridge) has superseded it in popularity. RELATIONSHIP OF STRIDE TO , PACE: TESTS BY H. M. ABRAHAMS. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS. (By “Harefoot” in Athletic News.) It appears to me that, so far as the length of stride taken by famous runners goes, there are many opinions, but few verified facts. Not that it matters, for we all know our longstriders, even, though we do not know how much ground/they cover at each leg-stretch.

Let, to show hoAv these opinions vary, only a fortnight ago a correspondent gave 7ft. Gin. as the length of stride* taken by -B. Postle, and hoav an old athlete who saiv this great sprinter run in Johannesburg Avfites to tell me that Postle’s length was Bft. to Bft. 6iri. More than ever I am convinced, lioavever, that by far the greater number of runners on our tracks to-day Avould reap a big advantage by giving attention to their stride; by taking striding practice, and getting that extra inch Avhich is Avorth such a lot to a mile runner.

That there are runners Avho take an interest in these things I knoAv, and I also knoAv that the men Avho take notice of the details of racing are mostly those \vho excel. The Olympic champion, H. M. Abrahams, is a shining example. H© comes along to tell me that he has made no end of experiments with regard to stride-length, and actually had measured every stride taken in a race.

He has, as any brainy man would, taken into consideration length and rapidity, and,for himself, has come to the conclusion that 7ft. 6in. is about his length, and that many sprinters would do better by shortening rather than lengthening their strides. I give here the Olympic champion’s letter, and hope that'when his holiday is over he will find time to send me the figures relating to the tests made in May and June to which he refers. It may interest him to know that the last stride he took in the 100 yards championship race at Stamford Bridge —the stride which began about 4ft. from the tape, and which, of course, carried him past it—measured 7ft. 6in. Here is Mr. Abrahams’ letter: “With regard to the question of length of stride, I made some experiments in aud June this year. I have not the exact figures with me at the moment, as I am away on holiday, but I will forward them to you later if you think they would he of interest. I ran a full dress rehearsal trial at Queen’s Club track over 100 yards, timed at 9 98-100 sec. After the run . I measured each stride most carefully, and found that I took 441- strides over the distance, and that ' the longest stride (only one) was eight feet. I imagined it might lie well that I took the same number of strides every second. and that an increase in speed is due to increase in length of stride, not to any increase in the rapidity of the strides, which is constant throughout the distance. Of course, it is obvious that speed depends neither on rapidity nor length of stride, hut on the ratio, and the best ratio must he discovered after much investigation. I found from further study that the above hypothesis is .approximately accurate. That is to say, lengths or the number of strides which I assume to take in 5 seconds, i.e., 22£, added together come to the distance which I should cover in 5 seconds. I repeated the experiment over 20, 30, and 50 vai’ds with much the same results. Early in the year I determined that I ought to shorten my stride, and I found at the championships that I took an extra stride in the 100 yards (451). At Paris in the 100 metres I took 491 sondes. Mv maximum stride now is p ■ out (H. 6in. All through the race the strides with the left foot are correspondingly longer than the strides

with the right foot, though when maximum speed is attained (about Hi yards per second) the strides are almost regular. There is a great deal oh wrong thinking about long striding—too much is. thought of length and hot enough of rapidity. An extra stride in a 100 yards race means 90 inches, and to obtain the same result by-increase of stride ([rapidity being constant) would require two inches per stride. Personally, I think most sprinters would benefit by a decrease in stride. Perhaps I might add a word about ‘dropping for the tape.’ I try to ‘drop’ about five yards out, with the result that my stride \shoots out to over 8 feet. This tends to overbalancing, and would he a handicap if practised too far from the finish, but is an advantage in the last couple of strides.” A very old English_ athlete, with a world-wide experience of the game as a competitor and observer, courious enough, also sends me a long letter emphasising the relationship of style to pace, and pointing out that while striding is valuable, it is only valuable when all else is in unison. The writer of this letter is Mr. E. J. L. Platnauer, who has spent many years in South Africa, but is at present in this country. He was a well-known competitor in England forty years ago. He writes: The question raised in “Harefoot’s’’ notes in, the last issue of the Athletic News about the length of Postle’s stride incidentaly introduces the relationship of strjde to pace. "While length of stride in sprinting has a natural tendency to increase the pace of the athlete, yet care must he exercised not to overdo it. Striding is not the only factor in speed, and men learning to sprint should bear this in mind.

The breathing, the carriage of the body, and the movement of the arms must adjust themselves to the stride, and this last must he natural, not mrced; it should be an even, rapid, 3asy movement calculated to obtain ‘he highest speed with the least possible expenditure of physical power. Sprinting is wonderfully exhilarating, and the writer opines—he was a sprinter in his young days—that there is no physical exertion comparable for excitement and joy to the last 40 yards’ burst of a 100 1 or 120^ yards race; that concentrated physical effort compensates, aye, more than compensates, for all the arduoustraining and work which enables one to put "this, the finishing touch, on to a race. With regard to A. B. Postle’s stride (adds Mr. platnauer) the writer mqt that athlete in Johnannesburg, and saw him run on several occasions. His action was singularly free from apparent effort, and his stride must have measured from Bff;. to Bft. 6in.; he appeared to skim the ground rather than force his way along it, as so many fast men do. \ .

He ran fifty yards against the clock within a week of his arrival in South Africa, and covered that distance in 5 2-ssec. —very fast travelling—and except in the last ten yards he never appeared to he moving. Compared to Postle, Donaldson, Holway, and Walker seemed to be laboured in their action, and yet Postle, when in his prime—he was well past it when he ran in Johannesburg— must have been superior to all of them.

Whilst in Johannesburg he took a great fancy to an amatuer runner there, Charles H. Jones, then amatuer champion, of South Africa. He desired to take him in hand arid train him; he said he had the makings of the fastest runner in the world, for he possessed the longest natural stride of any man life had met, which, averaging Sft., increased to almost 9ft. 6in. at the finish of a sprint. He did not have the chance of carrying his desire into effect, as Jones died shortly after, the. victim of a lightning mishap. The longest striding runner the writer ever saw in England (Mr. Platnauer proceeds) was H. R. Ball, a tall athlete with a long raking stride, "who won the quater-mile ■ amateur championship in 1882. He competed; in a 220 yards han- ’ dicap at Aston shortly before that championship, and he was set to concede starts up to 20 yards. The handicap; was Avon by another tall athlete, Martin Stilliard, who, Avith the - liberal start of 18 yards, AA'On by about a yard ih, ; if memory serves, 21 3-ssee. Ball was second. He appeared to bound over the ground, and his stride must have been in the region of 9ft. W. Page Phillips, Avho ran second to L. E. Myers in the quater, Avhen he put up the record, 48 3-ssec., Avas another long-striding athlete, for he Avas taller than Ball, but the Avriter never saAv him close enough to. judge his stride. Arthur Wharton, the negro champion °f England, Avas another of the fiugestriding brigade. But then runners like J. M. Cowie and F. J. T. Ritchie and, to refer to present-day athlets, Reggie Walker, were not tall men, nor Avas their striding out of the Avay: yet the record books tell us of what they were capable

Hence one must deduce (my correspondent concludes) that it is not so much the stride itself, as the ease and rapidity with which it can be brought into action that produces phenomenal speed.