ATHLETICS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19247, 26 February 1925, Page 6

ATHLETICS

CRACK ATHLETES j ■ i ASSEMBLE IN WANGANUI. I I >IG ATHLETIC GATHERING OPENS I’o MORROW. COOK'S GARDENS TRACKS REPORTED IN EAST ORDER. I The New Zealand Amateur Athletic Championships are to be held on Cook’s Gardens to-morrow and oa Saturday. All the competitors— Provincial champions, Australia’s representatives, and the local Centre’s cracks—have arrived for the big meeting. The contests promise to be easily the best ever seen in Wanganui. The recent rains, followed by drying winds and bright sunshine, have made the running tracks on Cook’s Gardens; in the best of order, and should the line weather continue, then some br’lliant' performances can be looked forward to when Australia and New Zealand’s best meet in the several championship' events. The programme each day lias been drawn up most, judiciously. Tomorrow afternoon there are seventeen events, and on Saturday nineteen contests figure on the bill of fare. The contestants hail from Australia; —-Queensland, New South Wales and; Victoria—and Otago, Canterbury. Wei-: lington, Auckland, and the West Coast j (North Island) Centres,• Wanganui’s re | presentatives coming in the last-rutmel Centre, which takes in the dubs from New Plymouth to Feilding. All the com petitors will be numbered, and are to I wear their provincial colours, t and reference to the official programme w'i; ' ehow at a glance who the competitor* are. THE HUNDRED YARDS. Ti-e real star item of any championship athletic programme is the hundred yards race. To-morrow the heats will; be run off, and on Saturday afternoon: the final is to be decided. Another spectacular event is the 220 yards, :n Mai ch the runners come round a fairly sharp bend into the straignt for the final dash to the tape. AR the best sprinters in Australia ; and New Zealand, w.th one exception, will be competing in boui lirse contests. The exception is ■■•Slip'’ Carr. ; Following are the starters in the one ■ hundred yards sprint: Parker (Australia;. Gre han ( Australia). Leadbettcr (Wellington;. Brownlee (Canterbury). Telfar (West Coast). ] ’Jenkins (Wellington). Paris (Wellington). Morgan (Otago). Prowse (West Coast). ♦Present champion. There are nine also engaged in ’.he : 120 vards, and they comprise a thor-, oughiy representative field. Here they. ire: Parker (Australia.. Grehan (Australia . Paris (Wellington-. Brownlee (Canterbury . Telfar (West Coast ■ . Kyle (Wellington i. ’Tracy (Wellington >. Morgan (Otago). Prowse (West Coast i. ♦Present champion. Both those races will be run in h ?at and full details of the draw are to be found in the official programme. FLAT-FOOTED FAMOUS DISTANCE RUNNERS DEERFOOT, LANG AND SHRUBB Since Paavo Nurmi ran himself into lame at the Olympic Games', critics j have been commenting upon the , fact that he runs flat-footed i writes I Claude Corbett in the Sydney hum.. The most severe of all have been the | Americans, in whose country the won- ; derful Finn has shattered every known ; distance record, and destroyed the taith , which Americans held that their men ] were invincible. On a recent afternoon 1 met Mr. j George Black, M.L.C., who, by the way, ; on Sunday last went past his 71st mile- j stone, and we talked about Nurmi. Mr. | Black, in the days of his youth, was a : runner of no mean note. Be remembered the famous Englishman, Bennett, the man who assumed the name of Deerfoot. the Indian, and. in order to curry out the part, placed feathers in his hair, and ran in moccasins. He was a wonderful long-distance runner, and was alwas flat-footed. 'Then there was Lang, a man who was able to get over a mile on the turnpike road in a little more than four minutes. Lang was a flatfooted runner. Australians will remember the visit of Alfred Shrubb, the noted English distance runner. He too. was flat-footed on the track. The main thing that 1 recollect regarding Shrubb was that always after finishing a “jaunt” of. say, ten miles, ac would drink two pints of beer before getting bis massage. He argued that the alcohol and malt put back into iis svstem that which he had sweated ant during the long run. Shrubb, like all other long-distance runners, had a mortal dread of developing consumption, or some heart affection. The three men named wore the most prominent in the history of long-dis-tance running. They were all flatfooted. They could never have made the times they did had they been otherwise. It stands to reason that had they liocn on their toes all the time the mnscles of their legs would have gone before they went very far. Mr. Black declares that he tried it once, and was so sore after a mile that 1C never attempted the task. Nurmi's flat-footed running, in his opinion, is |uite right. Anyway, he has results to mbstantiate his argument.

TVVE3TY-TWO RECORDS

MARVELLOUS NURMI. BUFFALO, Feb. 12. Willie Ritola beat even Nurmi's twomile record to-night in the greatest rav ■ ever run over this distance —indor or outdoor. There was t marvellous sprint to the finish. The time was 9min. :: 3-ssec.. compared with Nurmi’s recent time, Otnin. Ssee. Nurmi established three new records while winning the mile and a quarter race, averaging seven seconds improvement. 'l'll - 2000 yards' time was 4min. 2 2-.7se<-. He made the 2000 metres in Imin. 53 3-5 sec., ami finished the mile and a quarter in sniin. 23 2-5 sec. This was Nurmi’s twenty-second record since his arrival in the United States. ’ BURNED THE TRACK NURMI'S WONDERFUL RUN. NEW YORK, Feb. 14. A huge crowd of leading society and business people filled the Madisonsquare indoor track, when Paavo Nurmi literallv burned the track, in making a new record for two miles, in Sniin. 58 l-ssec. There were four other starters. He lapped two of them twice. He lapped Harry Helm at the mile and a half. Later Nurmi lapped Vern Booth, one of America's best, finishing an easy winner by more than a lap, breathing Willie Ritola opened the evening by running three miles, in 14min. 1 2-ssecs. Ritola also made a two ami a half miles world’s record, in Ilmin. 44see. He gave two men 175 yards handicap, so much that he seemed to start ahead of the field, not behind.