BUND ATHLETES

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XVII, Issue 5882, 9 April 1920, Page 2

BUND ATHLETES

SKILL IN SPORTS. INGENIOUS DEVICES. Running,, swimming, cricket, and jumping, outdoor games and cards, chess donlinoes, and other indoor pastimes are hard enough to excel in even with the advantage of sight. But how much more difficult must it be when one is blind? Yet all these games a/nd pastimes are engaged in. by blind athletes, who include in choir list aHo cycling and sculling, although in these sports they •are aided by those who are more fortunately situated and arc sighted (says the Sydlacy Sun). One would not suppose that blind men could engage in, cricket. Yet they do. 111116)1 a man is without one sense he is very often abnormal in another. The blind usually have very keen hearing. That is the reason they are able to got p Ibt of fun out of cricket. It is not at all uncommon to see them playing at the side of the Sydney Industrial Blind Institution.

The gamp is played with an ordinary bat. But ’the balls differ from the ordinary ones used by sighted cricketers. They are manufactured at the institution by the blind men themselves. They are hollow, with a small ball inside, and while it is amazing that the batsman with only the sound to guide him caln promptly hit it into the outfield, it is more extraordinary still 'to watch how accurately long-on or long-off, as the case may be, can race up with uncanny judgment to the precise spot where it has lodged.

Mr Hedger, the manager of the institution. is an old athleite himself. He wins puzzled as to how to get the competitors to run straight. It was found that in running events when the signal was given to start the competitors would either close ’ tin bn one ajaotlicr or run out so wide that ct best there were frequent accidents of a minor character, amd that yory frequently the speediest man did not win. Tire running was also constrained and slow. At last a plan was devised which entirely did away with the possibility of accidents through collision, and al> the same |ime cViabled the competitors to travel straight at tbp speed. Four racing trades are provided. To each of these it attached a single rope stretched tightly as possible breast high. Oh each rope is placed a- itug to which the competitor ties hip haaidkerchief, which he grasps tightly. At the word "go” he runs straight and with as much confidence as a seeing person, the rtfig attached to the taut rope holding him on his course.

Since tin's system was adopted in Australia it has been copied in America, ulnd interstate contests are now carried out in that country. Mr Hedger is proud ot: this, because it has been the means of opening up a life of activity for sightless persons throughout the world. 1

' At the annual sports of the institution, held at Clifton Gardens in 1919, J. 'JL'dy'lor, a blind civilian, won the championship race of 90 yards in 10 J see., timed by the late T. M. Malone, an cxi.hampion runnpr himself. At the annual sports held in 1918 T. C, Burgess, a blind soldier, when practically untrained, ran 90 yards In 11 sec. dead. In 1919 this time was shortened by one-fi th of a scco/nd by another blind soldier, A. Lovell, 'who also won the swimming race in excellent time.