THE ATHLETIC WORLD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 252, 23 October 1937, Page 4

THE ATHLETIC WORLD

OLD TIMERS NOT SLOW ADVANTAGES OF MODERN TIMES BETTER TRAINING METHODS There is nothing quite so futile in sports writing as an endeavour to compare in an imaginary contest sports champions of other days with modern cracks. Futile because the athletic world has moved so rapidly in the last thirty or forty years that it is virtually impossible to assess with certainty what allowances can be made for such intangible things as more expert coaching, more intense competition, and a different mental approach.

The modern athlete does run faster and jumps further than the oldtimer. No one can deny this. The record book is irrefutable evidence. But why does he? His legs are no longer, his muscles are no stronger, and his heart and lungs no better than those of the man of fifty years ago. He trains no harder, lives no cleaner. But he does have advantages of which the old-timer never dreamed.

Take those things which cannot be adequately measured—scientific training, intense competition, and the changed mental outlook. Champions of the eighties, most of them, trained themselves. Some didn’t even have spiked shoes. They ran in tennis shoes. They went down to the track, usually grass and very rough, did tfieir work, and then pulled on their street clothes generally over sweat and grime, for few were the showers in those days. When they couldn’t get down to the track they might run on the road for wind and develop their muscles in the gym. swinging Indian clubs and dumbbells. “Scientific” Diet And their diet. Well, here is the "scientific” diet of one American champion in the middle eighties: Little or no water, one glass a day if possible. Very rare beef and mutton, a minimum of vegetables and fruit. No sugar. Tea instead of coffee. Stale bread or toast without butter.

There was no one to check their weights before and after training. No, one to tell them how to reach peak condition. No one to take care of the annoying details of buying tickets and arranging hotel accommodation for important meetings. No one to keep them posted of the progress of the gathering, and to see to it that they were warmed up in time for their event. They had to fend for themselves. And they paid their own expenses.

There was no intense competition. No Olympic Games. The sport was a leisurely one. There were few competitors. Pressure of numbers, which of itself to-day must force athletes to bigger and better things, was unknown. Indeed, the number of competitors at a major meeting in America to-day exceeds the total number of athletes in the world round about 1880. Different Approach

And there was no such thing as going for world's records as the sport knows now. There was no large public worshipping at the shrine of the champion. Athletes thought in terms of 10-second hundreds, 50-sec-ond quarters, two-minute halves and 4min. 30sec. miles.

To-day the champion aims at a 9 2-ssec. hundred, a Imin. 50sec. half. He has a certain mark burned into his brain. . If others have run a 43 2-ssec. quarter-mile, and pole-vaulted fourteen apd a half feet, then, he asks himself, “Why can’t I do it?” And now for the more tangible things. There is the little matter of timing. Fifty years ago watches did not record tenths of a second. The seconds were split into quarters, as the slowest time was always the oliicial one. If a man ran a 100yds. in 9 4-ssec. he would be credited with 10 seconds. Ten seconds indeed, acted as a barrier. It was generally agreed that it was humanly impossible for a man to run a hundred in better than 10 seconds.

Time-keepers, in fact, refused to announce a time lower than 10 seconds, whatever their watches might have shown. They were afraid of losing their manna. It was no small thing to be laughed to scorn as an incompetent watch-holder. And laughed to scorn they would have been by a then incredulous public. Then there is that very important consideration, the tracks. The oldtimer generally ran on a grass patch, with the track marked out by stakes and a rope, the rope to keep the spectators from impeding his progress. For spectators in the early days had the delightful habit of wandering across the track in the face of approaching runners.

When Wendell Barker, famous American athlete, returned 47i‘sec. for a straight quarter-mile in 1886, he rar. on a trotting track, and he covered the last 150 yards with one shoe. The grass was not so severe on the bare skin as a cinder track, but there was fine travel on the surface, and when he finished portions of his shoeless loot were raw and bleeding.