GREAT JUMPING.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 207, 16 August 1927, Page 9

GREAT JUMPING.

HEIGHT OF EIGHT FEET. AUTHORITATIVE REPORTS. Can a man clear eight feet in a running high jump? If the average athlete were asked that question, he would promptly say no; but after what 1 was told at Stamford Bridge during the Kinnaird Trophy meeting, I should not like to be too sure about it, writes A. B. George in the “All Sports Weekly.” I was lucky enough to run across S. S. Abrahams, the old Cambridge Blue and winner of the Amateur Athletic Association long jump championship of 1913, who is home on leave from Uganda, where he holds the responsible position of AttorneyGeneral.

With another old ’Varsity athlete in E. J. Hussey, he does what he can to further athletics in that part of the world, and from what he tells me, there are some wonderful high jumpers among the natives. The Batrisi tribe specialises in high jumpers, who have a method of their own. They build up a small mound of earth, about four inches high, from wbich to take off, and wonderful as it sounus, apparently—under these conditions—a Height of eight feet has oeen cleared.

Evidently the mound represents much greater assistance than the height in inches. Back in the ’eighties, C. VV. Rowden cleared lift □in in a Volunteer camp in Devonshire. It was said that he took off from a slight mound, and so the performance was not recognised as a record.

jar Abrahams knows top much about athletics to lend himself to any statement which is mere table- tie has seen puo cographs of the fiatnsi jumpers in action and their style is splendid. Vi hat he has heard about tneir ability is too authentic to be ignored entirely, and there must be something in this method of jumping. It is an interesting subject, and 1 hope Mr Abrahams will be able to test the jumpers on level ground one day and tell British sportsmen the result.

We frequently hear of wonderful performance by natives in Africa, India, and other parts of the world. Some are certainly genuine, as, lor example, the recent victory of a Mexican Indian m a Marathon race in the hinted States, and it is just possible we may see another hungooat in me held when the next Olympic Marathon is run. “I have advised athletes not to go in tor training beiore breakfast, as 'Varsity oarsmen were stated to be doing, and so 1 am very pleased to notice that Dr. A. Abrahams—still another of the family to gain athletic ability at Cambridge—recently stated in a lecture he gave that ‘exercise beiore breakfast is physilogically unsound.’ He gave a lot more valuable advice, and if ever the Amateur Athletic Association proceed with the Advisory Corps scheme, what Dr. Abrahams said should be embodied in the teaching.