MAN SPEED.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19225, 16 July 1924, Page 5

MAN SPEED.

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 tiie assistance of any mechanical power. The sprinter who covers a hundred yards in ten seconds, travels at an average speed of rather more than the twenty miles an norm 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 faeter, for although the ordinary skater makes a circuit of the rink at only about fourteen miles an hour, the racing expert Iras been known to attain a speed of twenty-five miles. Ice skating produces about the same maximum speed as rolled skating, but it is estimated that in ice hockey, and over short distances, rather higher speeds are sometimes attained. Diving can prcduco very high velocities, varying with the height from which the dive is made. A diver, for instance, who takes off from a height, of fiftv feet is actually travelling at the rate of thirtyeight miles an hour when he enters the water. The motor-cyclist whose speedometer register’s sixty miles an hour experiences a glow of pride in his mount, yet nothing has been done which has not already been achieved by man-power. A speed of more than sixty-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 none the less a remarkable feat. It is, however, only when wheels are aoandonecl that the highest man-power speeds became possibre. In a race on skis down the snow-clad mountain slope an. average speed of fortyfive miles an hour is not 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 on a specially prepared snow or ice runs frequently produces a speed of forty-five miles an hour, and on the famous Cresta run a speed of eighty miles an hour has been reached.