A WARNING TO ATHLETES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XIII, 28 March 1896, Page 341

A WARNING TO ATHLETES.

Sir B. W. Richardson, dealing with this subject in the Young Man, says : —‘ Athleticism means competition of a physical kind ; the dangers of it lie in the trials so often made of one body testing its powers against another. If all were of the same cast the trial might be fair and to a considerable extent free from risk, because the overstrain even of the weaker might be small, and skill might win. The risk comes in from the efforts made by organs of different qualities, qualities not understood by their owners, and liable to the most serious misunderstandings by them. The heart is usually the first sufferer. Its work is great; it suffers from the direct task put upon it, and it suffers from impulses which are in their way mental in character. In all cases the heart, which is a muscle, wants to be in accord with all the other muscles of the body that are taken into requisition, as well as with the nervous action which excites them into motion. If, in order to supply the muscles that have to be competitively worked with sufficient blood, it must itself overwork, then it becomes damaged in structure and in function. It becomes too large and powerful ; it is one organ assisting many, working for all that are demanded immediately, as well as for other organs which have to be kept regularly in play and in repair. Its openings or floodgates become distended. Its valves go out of gear with the parts they have to defend ; its muscular structure is overdeveloped, like the muscles of the blacksmith’s arm or the dancer's leg ; and, in time, it is worn out relatively, or it is too strong for its duty toward the delicate parts it supplies; or it wears out too rapidly, and becomes too weak. I have witnessed all these changes and the damages that follow them, and I cannot too earnestly call attention to them. Even the most skilful and most commanding athletics are not safe. The young athletic does not make an old one. The watch is over-wound. If we put an indiarubber band around letter or parcels it holds well at first, and it holds long if it be kept on with no more than moderate firmness. In like manner, the elastic and rebounding tissues of our organs, aud specially of our minute channels of circulation, keep strong, and will do so, if they are not too long and too often subjected to tension and pressure. If they are, like the rubber, they give way and rupture and lose their sustain ing power. Then we see the athletic engine, the body, destroyed for athletic work, often before its prime. It should last in fine play, say, twenty years ; it begins to fail in fifteen, and it is practically dead in twenty. The man is considered to be too old, and must make way for the younger aspirant. If good physical exercise could, therefore, be kept free of competition, it would be far better for the world at large.