A GREAT RUNNER

Waipa Post, Volume 36, Issue 2148, 24 April 1928, Page 3

A GREAT RUNNER

A. NEWTON BREAKS 100 MILE RECORD. There has been no athlete more remarkable in our time than Arthur Newton, who went to London from South Africa to make an attack on his own record for one hundred miles. At the age of forty-four he looks in ordinary dress like a modest retiring city man, who spends his spare timQ pottering about a suburban garden. I was once present when he gave a wireless talk, and his thin voice quivered, and he shook at the knees, through fright. That night, or, indeed, any other, you would not have chosen him to run a mile. But we know of course that as a farmer he has spent many years in South Africa, and that he is as hard as nails. From a point of view of style, too, you would not believe him a record breaker. He has a slight malformation of one of his heels, and experts declare it is surprising that he is able to run at all. His action is strange.

He swings his arms little, and his legs appear to be dragged rather than lifted. But there is beautiful rhythm about his movement. The conditions, when he set off from just outside Bath for Hyde Park Corner, London, in the dead of night, were most unpromising. There was a strong wind meeting him on the side of the face; it was raining, and it was known that some of the country through which he would have to pass was flooded. Attempts were made to persuade him to postpone his effort, but he declined, saying that he did not mind the wind, or the rain, or the floods, The preparations for tM run were of a most perfunctory 'character. Four men were provided to run with Newton in relays, but he said he would rather do without them. In these circumstances though they started, they consulted his wishes, and, instead of giving him a friendly lead, they forged ahead, and he never saw three of them. The only thing taken was his own specially prepared drink, but at the end of the first hour he had stomach trouble, and it lasted to the end of the run. At five o’clock in the morning he asked for some hot tea, and, with the countryside still asleep, it could be obtained only with difficulty by friends hurrying forward in a motor car. At this time it did not seem as though he would be able to finish the course, but a little later he stopped for ten minutes to take refreshment, and resuming he went on strongly. At Maidenhead the street was a foot deep with water, but he ran along a narrow plaiik. Then, on approaching London, he had to contend with crowds and at Hammersmith the police had to be summoned to keep a way clear for him. Indeed for nearly the whole of the last five miles he had to struggle with the London traffic. Thousands awaited him in Hyde Park. A hundred yards or so from the finish an attempt was made to carry him, but he flung the people aside, and struggled on, and then when the task was over he bolted between two motor buses and escaped the cheering crowd into St. George’s Hospital on the other side of the road. His time for the hundred miles was 14 hours 22 minutes 10 seconds, as compared with his previous best in South Africa of 14 hours 43 minutes.