Athletic Records

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 91, 8 July 1927, Page 10

Athletic Records

| .. . and records smash, *1 | In a frenzy of flying feet.” |

Old Marks Disappearing

THERE was a rather curious coincidence reported over the cables last week-end in connection with the world’s 440yds. hurdles record. On the same afternoon as Lord % Burghley, the brilliant English hurdler, equalised the present record of 54 1-5 sec., an American hurdler, J. Gibson, clipped 1 3-5 sec. off the old mark.

Nowadays, such events pass almost unnoticed by the sporting world. We are living in an age when no athletic record, or any previous individual achievement of outstanding merit, is safe from the attacks of others.

Times have changed. t In the days of the great Harry Hutchens in England, and of “Wally” Williams and other famous Botany handicap runners in Australia, it was the race and not the breaking of the record that counted. These great runners were good for anything up to eight yards under “evens” for a Sheffield handicap, but like many other famous old-timers, their best figures are not on record. THE CRAZE FOR RECORDS The Americans, with their intensive methods applied to sport, were the first to base success on the figures registered by clock and tape measure. It was an American, N. S. Taber, who was credited in 1915 with beating W. G. George’s famous mile in 4min. 12|sec., figures which had stood unchallenged for nigh on 30 years. Taber’s time 4 min. 12 3-5 sec., so infinitesimal a difference as to be an inconclusive test of a record, but down it went in the American A.A.A. record book, and other countries perforce had to follow suit. .

All arguments on that score, however, were settled eight years later, when Paavo Nurmi stepped on to the scene, and squashed the two contentious sets of figures by a couple <sf seconds and more, his figures being 4min. 10 2-ssec. and even now, we do not regard this as the limit of human endurance. Lloyd Hahn, the American runner, who visited New Zealand last year, has been threatening for the past year to shift Nurmi’s record off the book, and even if he hasn’t looked like making good his intention, there is no saying but that we may pick up one newspaper one of these nights and find that a German schoolmaster by the name of Peltzer has done the trick.

The monotonous regularity with which “even” time is beaten by dozens of runners year after year has somewhat prepared us for a 100yds. in 9 sec., a feat which many old-time athletes declare was within the compass of Harry Hutchens, could he have raced under modern conditions in California or South Africa, where climate and atmosphere play such a big part in record-breaking. At the present time, both Paddock and Locke, two Americans, have been credited with 9X sec. for the distance, and before the war, Jack Donaldson clipped 5-8 of a second off “evens” for the distance. AN EVERY-DAY AFFAIR The dyed-in-the-wool sporting fan no longer feels a pleasurable thrill when one of his heroes of track and playing fields puts up a record-breaking performance. He expects him to. Curiously, enougfi, the smashing of records has been more persistently performed since the days of the war, and this is remarkable in view of the severe losses of virile manhood in practically every country, except America, from 19*14 to 1918.

It is many years ago since Captain Webb swam the English channel and

it was not until 28 years later that the feat was emulated by another Englishman, Tom Burgess. But since the war, that elusive stretch of water has been conquered on a number of occasons, twice by women, .one the mother of a family. In athletics we have witnessed a number of feats which , 20 years ago, would have been regarded as beyond the powers of man. A generation ago, when C. B. Fry, "The Admirable Crichton” of English Sport, jumped 23ft. 61in., the feat created a tremendous stir. Then two Irishmen. Newburn and O’Connor, took Fry’s record in successive leaps to within a quarter of an inch of 25ft., these being O’Connor’s figures. There the record stayed *for more than 20 years. OLD RECORD GOES But in 1924, Legendre, an unknown American had his “crowded hour of glorious life” at the Olympic Games in Paris when he astounded his teammates by jumping nearer 26ft. than 25. His spectacular triumph was shortlived. In the following year, de Hart Hubbard, an American negro university student*", flung himself through the air in one terrific leap which carried him 25ft. 10 7-Bin. from the take-off board. This self-same Hubbard had some entertaining ideas of training for a long jump. His favourite stunt was to turn out earlier in the afternoon in a 100yds. sprint to the annoyance of Scholz, Murchison and Co., who found it bad policy to linger by the wayside with a dusky young man capable of two yards under “evens” trailing them up along

the straight, and he didn’t always trail them,, either.

One solitary record over a standard distance still stands the test of time. It is Maxey Long’s famous straight-away guarter-mile dash in America in 47 sec. dead, established in 1900.

At the last New Zealand amateur athletic championships, half-a-dozen and more records were either broken or equalled. In 1905, when the All Blacks went within an ace of perfection in sport by sustaining only one defeat on their British tour, they established a record which certainly lasted many years, but it was eclipsed by their successors of 1924.

Cricket records would appear to be only made to be broken. Archie Maclaren’s mammoth score of 424 at Taunton in 1895, stood for many years, but it was beaten a few years back by W. Ponsford, wha scored 429 for Victoria against Tasmania. The century of centuries of the late Dr. W. G. Grace was equalled by Tom Hayward before the war, but the figures of both ol these. great cricketers have been eclipsed by that master batsmaa ard great, test match performer, John Berry Hobbs.

Whether the men of to-day arc better or worse in a purely athletic sense than the men of days gone by is not worth discussing. But in technique, the athlete of to-day is superior. More than that, he has the advantage of better tracks ana more scientific training methods. On none of these points can it safely be said that finality has been reached. And that is why records are broken and why they will continue to