Percy C. Madeira - University Archives and Records Center ...

16
Not So Fast
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
PERCY C . MADEIR A
(Amateur One-Mile Champion of America, 1884)
I had come a long way to see that mile race . A
long way . that is, for a man seventy-three years
old . I had read about Cunningham, Bonthron ,
Venzke and Lovelock . I had read about 4 :1 0 miles
and 4:O8 miles and even 4 :06 miles, and my curiosit y
had got the better of me . I wanted to see wha t
manner of men these were who were waggling thei r
fingers derisively at Father Time .
I have never lost interest in running . I could n ' t
have lost interest if I had wanted to . For, thirt y
years after I hung up my spiked shoes, my son Loui s
made the American Olympic Team in th e 1500-meter
race . and to say that I was interested in following hi s
track care e r would be putting it mildly .
From my easy chair I had visualized them a
ing legs of piano wir e and rubber. and thighs s hav an d
bodies streamlined in some miraculous fashion .
"Maybe." I thought, "there has been a New Deal i n
muscles and tendons, in endurance and coordination
and vital energy . Maybe young men nowadays hav e
bigger hearts and roomier lungs . Maybe they hav e
invented a new way of burning up fatigue poison .
Maybe they are just naturally born faster thes e
days ."
The starter 's gun coughed a dry, hacking cough
down on the floor of the Palmer Stadium, an
.
d long-muscled legs began to eat up space
Cunningham was setting the pace, wit h Lovelock
just back of his shoulder . Their spiked shoes didn ' t
leave marks on the track . In the old days, cup mark s
showed when the spikes went in . Sometimes . i n
those old days . the spikes would bend or break whe n
they struck a hard clinker or a big cinder.
They ran easily, well within themselves, for three
laps .
Looking Backward
T HE gun coughed once more . This time for th e
"gun lap ." Lovelock finished first . The hands o f
the big electric clock at one end of the field showe d
approximately four minutes and twelve seconds . an d
the crowd muttered . They were disappointed . They
had come to see a world 's record broken . They ha d
come to accept broken world ' s r ecords as a matter
of course .
I didn't see the runners walk off the track and Pic k
up their sweaters and sweat pants . I didn't see th e
barbered and manicured track with each wrinkl e
pressed out of it by a steam roller. I didn't see feet
reaching out spiked shoes of
kangaroo hide to pull in th e
cinders, limbs glistening wit h
wintergreen and oil from th e
rubbers' hands, and flat stom -
achs filled with the remnant s
of a scientifically prepared
meal eaten at just the prope r
interval before the race . I sa w
a different scene. There was no
Ted Husing in it . telling unseen
millions of a close finish ,
through a portable sending set .
There were no 40,000 spectators
sitting on the slope of a
concrete bowl, looking through
binoculars and holding expensive
souvenir programs .
I saw a skinny boy with leg s
so long he seemed to be spli t
almost to his collar button .
was lugging a battered leathe r
satchel over cobblestones . H e
climbed into a horsecar which
ran in the general direction of
a trotting-horse truck . I saw him running on a
dirt track in a pair of sneakers, and afterwar d
putting on his street clothes over the dirt an d
sweat, because there were no showers . Then h e
went home in the horsecar once more .
Sneaker Versus Spik e
THAT boy was myself . The time was 1879.
During the week when I couldn't go to th e
horse tracks . I ran around city blocks to ge t
wind, and I developed my muscles in a gym ,
swinging Indian clubs and dumbbells . As fo r
diet, this was what I was told to do :
" Keep out of the dust, or. when you are in i t,
put a handkerchief over your nose and mouth .
so that you will not breathe dust . Little or n o
water . confine yourself if possible to a glas s a
day . Very rare beef and mutton ; go easy o n
vegetables and fruit . Cut out sugar, drink tea
instead of coffee at your meals, stale bread, o r
toast, without butter ."
That was my "scientific" diet, but I did no t
follow it .
Instead of the oval ribbon of pressed cinders i n
the Palmer Stadium, I saw the track marked out o n
the grass at the old Germantown Cricket Club, wher e
the University of Pennsylvania held a meet . Th e
track was marked out on the cricket pitch by stakes
and a rope . A lot of the contestants didn 't hav e
spiked shoes . They ran in tennis shoes or sneakers .
The fans stood up to look and walked around .
That night when I reached home after watchin g
Lovelock's victory, I got out my pencil and paper an d
did some figuring. Lovelock, Cunningham . Venzk e
and Bonthro n had not had piano-wire-and-rubbe r
legs and streamlined bodies at all . Their legs were n o
longer, their muscles wer e no stronger, their lungs
and hearts no bigger than the muscles and lungs an d
hearts of the men I had run with fifty years before .
They lived no cleaner. They worked no harder to ge t
themselves into shape . I have checked on these
points. "What have they got ," I asked myself, "tha t
we didn 't have? " After a while I figured it out .
The answers may not satisfy you . But they satisfied
me, and I don't think that it is merely the wis h
being father to the thought .
I realize that if there is one thing more fruitles s
and futile in sports writing than another, it is on e
of these imaginary contests on paper about the
He
July 11 .193 6
Wendell F . Raker, Who Finished a Quarter Mile i n
47 3/4 Seconds on a Dirt Track, Wearing On e Shoe
champions of a bygone day and the champions o f
t oday . But even knowing that . I'm going to take a
crack at it . We know how fast the present-day cro p
of trackmen can run, and we know how fast the old -
timers could run . or do we? That last question i s
what I am getting at .
As far us the sports writers and track fans of toda y
are concerned, the debate is ended before it begins .
They say . "All you ' ve got to do is look at the records .
Cunningham and Hornbostel and Eastman an d
Peacock would make them all look as if they wer e
running in sand up to their ankles . "
To the people who talk like that, I have only on e
thing to say : "Sometimes they did run in sand up t o
their ankles ." I ran a race on the old track of th e
Williamsburg Athletic Club, at Brooklyn, on September
27, 1884. The Spirit of the Times said, in it s
follow-up story of the meet, "The track in many
places was nothing but sand, ankle deep, throug h
which the runners had to wade ."
But what about the results of my paper and penci l
and figuring ?
First, I told myself, they have faster tracks . Th e
tracks of today are constructed by track engineer s
with a base of heavy cinders, a layer of clay and a
The Muybridge Animal Locomotion Pictures of the Author Using His One Mile Pace. A Forerunner
.

Lon Myers . Who HeId Enough Records for Three
Men . Ranging, All the Way From 100 Yards to One Mil e
layer of fine cinders on top . They are planned fo r
resilience and spring . They are planned to drai n
easily . They are swept and rolled before big races .
They are cared for constantly, every day, until the y
are like billiard tables .
According to Mr . William J. Bingham, Director of
Athletics at Harvard University . it has been estimated
that the present stadium track is about si x
seconds faster than the first Harvard stadium track ,
the one built in I897 .
Lawson Robertson, the Olympic coach, who know s
more about track athletics than any other man I
know, is of the opinion that the track in the Olympi c
Stadium at Los Angeles, which has a base of peat, is
some seconds faster than the Harvard track .
It was on a fifth-of-a-mile track, with two mor e
turns to the mile than the modern quarter-mil e
track, that the early Intercollegiate Association an d
the National Association held their meets .
Second, today we have tenth-of-a-second sto p
watches. Fifty years ago, the stop watches cut the
seconds into quarters, later into fifths, and now int o
tenths. If a man ran a hundred yards in nine an d
eight-tenths seconds fifty years ago, his time would
be recorded as ten seconds . In order to get a better
THE SATURDAY EVENING POS T
record, he would have had to run fast enoug h
to register nine and three-fourths . and h e might
have had to run it in nine and six-tenths t o
have cut his official time down to nine an d
three-fourths seconds .
I asked Lawson Robertson what advantage
it would be fair to say the tenth-second sto p
watch gives the present-day runner, and h e
said, "The advantage would be about twotenths
of a second . "
Third, the modern crouching start . All race s
used to start with a standing start when I wa s
running . Mike Murphy . who developed th e
crouch start. used to say it was worth a tent h
of a second to a runner . Robertson thinks it i s
worth more than a tenth of a second .
Fourth . the 220 used to be run around a curve ,
and the start was at the beginning of the curve .
The lanes were not staggered : in fact, there
were no lanes . The result was a crowding of th e
contestants, a jostling and pushing and elbowing,
and an inability r eally to get under way
until the straightaway was reached . A man on
the outside sometimes had to run yards farther
than a man on the pole . I asked Robertson to
figure the time advantage the modern 220
straightaway gave a runner .
"One full second ." he said .
I asked him . " What about the elimination of
one curve from the quarter mile? We used t o
run it around two curves . By the time the runners
have hit the first curve now, they ar e
straightened out, and all scrambling and jockey -
ing has been eliminated . "
Robertson thinks that a man running a quarter
around one curve instead of two has a time
advantage of eight-tenths of a second before he
even steps on the track .
In addition to these things . I thought of others .
no less important to my mind . As a matter of fact .
perhaps more important than improved tracks ,
crouching starts and tenth-secon d
watches .
First, expert coaching . Serond, com -
competition . Third, a new mental ceiling .
Educating Feet
HE clubs, colleges, universities,
Thigh schools and prep schools of
today employ men whose business i t
is to polish and perfect the form of th e
young men under them . They kno w
about rhythm, timing, co-ordinatio n
and obtaining a maximum r esul t
from the minimum effort . They mak e
sure that their teams will go into
competition knowing all that the
champions know, by the use of slo w
movies, charts, diagrams and measurements
.
Their stars begin where th e
champions of last year. and the year
of the Motion Picture . Above— William Byrd Page Who jumped Nine Inches Higher Than His Own Head . to a World's Record
1 7
before, left off. as far as a knowledge of technique i s
concerned .
In my day . we taught ourselves . Or we comp e ted
untaught . We sailed over hurdles instead of clipping
them scissorwise, because we didn't know any bet -
ter. We flung ourselves at a broad jump take-off o r
at the high jump and vaulting crossbars with a will .
but without the placing of colored pegs at certai n
mathematically spaced intervals along the runway .
worked out to a fraction of an inch by a coach . W e
didn ' t know about moving the vaulting standards
back from the pit when the bar climbed higher, so
that our trajectory would lift : we hit the jumping
take-offs helter-skelter, either inches behind or foul -
ing, instead of so judging our run that every last inc h
would he utilized .
Stepchildren of the Cinders
UR old ash vaulting poles had no spring . The y
O were of heavy wood which was clumsy to manipulate
. and there was no box sunk into the ground into
which to thrust your pole while vaulting, as is th e
case now . We didn 't know that a pole of bamboo
would act as a catapult and throw a man inche s
higher in the air . We thought we were lucky if the
ash pole didn't break in midair and impale a vaulte r
on its jagged halves .
We had no trainers who made us check our weight s
on a chart before and after each practice, to see
whether or not we were drawing our edge too fine .
Nobody told us what to do each day in order to approach
a race at the peak of condition. No coach o r
manager took care of all the petty and annoying little
details of buying tickets, arranging hotel accommodations
. transportation to and from the meet . an d
of seeing that our baggage was in the dressing roo m
for us when we got there. No manager kept an ey e
on the progress of the meet and saw to it that we we r e
warmed up in time and out on the track to r eport t o
the clerk of the course . (Continued on Pa te 7 7

And we paid our own expenses .
Competition today is sharply different
from the competition of my day .
The number of contestants in one o f
our national championships of today
would be about equal to the number
of spectators in an average meet of
fifty years ago . The number of athletes
who competed in a fixture like the
Penn Relays last year was greate r
than all the track athletes in the worl d
when I first ran in a race . Th e modern
Olympic Games were years away . The
number and quality of competitors t
oday cannot but force each athlete t o
faster and faster times by sheer pressure
of numbers, if by nothing else .
And last, but not least, there is the
matter of a competitive mental ceiling .
When a young man of today steps ou t
onto the track to run a quarter mile, he
does so with the knowledge that a
human being has run the distance i n
forty-six and a fraction seconds. I n
his mind, consciously or subconsciously .
he tells himself, "If Bill Carr and Be n
Eastman can do it . I can do it . "
The dash man of today thinks i n
terms of nine and two-fifths and nine
and five-tenths seconds . The pole vaulter
's goal is fourteen feet, and i
limbing toward fifteen feet inch by s c inch .
Even prep-school hurdlers have at mar k
of fourteen and a half second s burned
into their brains . They don 't allo w
themselves to aim at anything less .
If, as most coaches will tell you , 90
per cent of being a champion is abov e
the ears, such a mental attitude canno t
help but put wings on a runner's feet .
When I was running . our ideas of
a competitive limit were a four-thirt y
mile, a fifty-second quarter, or a twominute
half. And the men we ra n
against had the same mental ceiling .
I have tried to work out a comparative
chart showing the advantag e in
seconds which the changes that hav e
taken place in the bare mechanics o f
track athletics give the athlete of t
oday over his brother of fifty years ago .
I have had them checked by Lawso n
Robertson, who agrees that I hav e
been fair in my allowances and that my
basis of comparative times is sound .
I have not taken into consideratio n
such intangibles as more expert coaching,
more intense competition and a
new mental ceiling .
100 yards
220 yards
440 yards
880s yard
1 mil e
TAGE TO ATHLETE OF TODAY
Crouching Start FASTER TRACK TOT
REDUCTION IN CURVES
IN
AL ADVAN
Repeating the old re cords for these
distances and deducting the adjustments
referred to, it is found :
100 yards
220 yards
440 yards
440 yards (curves)
880 yards
1 mile (professional )
1 milers (amateur)
THE SATURDAY EVENING POS T
NOT SO FAS T
Continued from Page 1 7
The following table gives th e theoretical performance of 1886 and the actua l
performance of 1935 :
220 yards
440 yards straightaway
440 yards around track
s
1 mile
880 yard
No curves, eight-tenths second eliminated
If these adjustments are correct, i t
would appear that the men of fifty
years ago ran nearly as fast as the me n
of 1935. The greatest discrepanc
y appears to be in the half mile, for the me n
of today run this relatively faster tha n
the other distances . Robertson tell s
me it was only about twenty year s ago
that men really learned how to run th e
half mile .
The rules under which the shot an d
hammer were thrown fifty years ago
are entirely different from the rules i n
force today, so that no comparison i s
possible in these events .
The hurdles are now run over individual
barriers and in individual lanes .
Each hurdle is built so that it tips over
when it is touched, without necessaril y
breaking a hurdler 's stride . In my day ,
there was one stiff bar all the way acros s
the track. held by rigid supports a t
each end, so that if a hurdler tipped i t
he went down on his face. With no
lanes marked and no individual hurdle s
for each man. crowding and jostling
was the usual thing . Hurdlers . knowing
the fate in store for them if they hi t
a hurdle, cleared it with plenty t o
spare . They saile d
through the air a t
it, and not unti l
the individua l
hurdle came int o
use did Alvi n
Kraenzlein inven t
the step-over technique
whic h made
hurdle jumpin g
nothing more o r
less than an extra long stride with the
hurdle in the middle of it . With the old
sail the hurdler didn't come down ru nning, as he does
today . There was
Distance 1886 RECORDS 1886
Distance 1886 1935
number only about 500 were good
enough to enter a track-championshi p
meet. Today. in Germany alone, there
are upwards of
350,000 men ta king
an active par t
in track and fiel d
athletics, and i n
America ther e
must be 1,000,000
I suppose tha t
only a few old -
timers like mysel f
have ever heard
of Wendell Baker ,
of Harvard : L . E .
Myers, of the Manhattan Athleti c
Club : W . H . Goodman, of Harvard :
H . S. Brooks, Jr .. of Yale : H . H . Lee ,
of the University of Pennsylvania : and
W . G . George, of England. But thei r
names were magic names to conjure
with fifty years ago. Whenever me n
gathered for athletic conversation ,
their feats were hashed over and discussed
and rnarveled at .
Horace Lee ran the hundred in te n
flat on grass, and he had a way of beating
the other ten-second men by a
couple of yards. An old professiona l
runner, Scotty McMasters, told me h e
had frequently timed Lee in bette r
than ten seconds, and that with a watc h
that cut a quarter of a second . "Eve n
time " for the hundred was reached a s
early as 1878. The ten-second mar k
acted as a sort of barrier . I t was universally
agreed that no man could ru n
faster than that, and many a docker
holding a watch on men lik e Lee and
Baker and Wendell could not believ e
his own eyes when the hands showed a
fraction less than ten flat . and, rather
than be laughed to scorn and put dow n
as incompetent timers . announced th e
100 yards 10 sec. Held by a number of men .
220 yards 22 sec. Wendell Baker in 1886 .
440 yards straightaway . Wendell Baker in 1886 .
440 yards (two turns) L . E. Myers in 1881 .
12 mile 1 min., sec . L. E. Myers in 1885 .
1 mile (professional) 4 min ., 12 3/4 sec. W. G. George in 1883.
1 mile (amateur) 4 min . . 21 2 5 sec . W . G . George in 1882 .
result as ten seconds flat in loud, dete rmined voices
. I n England, any time o f
less than ten and one-fifth seconds wa s
viewed with dark suspicion .
The world's records as they existe d
Watches Cutting 1/10 instead of 1/5 second
lines above
d Cambridge
1886
PERFORMANCE
THEORETICAL
ADJUSTMENTS
Records
n 1880
a distinct pause
after each hurdle
while he gathered
himself for th e
run to the nex t
hurdle .
Track athletics
fifty years ag o
in 1886 are given in the table a fe w
.
Take that mile mark, for example .
Literally . thousands of milers have
made assaults upon it, and in fifty-thre e
years we have only been able to lowe r
the record a litt le more than five seconds.
A description of Baker's famou s
were confined t o
a few Easter n
colleges . Ne w
York amateurs, Oxford an
universities in England . the Iris h
universities, the harriers and the pro-
shoeless quarter-mile race in which h e
established a world's record of forty -
seven and three-quarters seconds wa s
printed in The Spirit of the Times . Th e
shoe, by the way, is now in the trophy
case at Harvard . The laces have neve r
fessionals of
England . The
just been untied since Baker tied the m
before the race .
total number
of track athletes
in th e
world i
probabl y
would no
t exceed 1500 or
2000. and it
is probabl e
The description of the race follows :
THE FASTEST IN THE WORLD
At Beacon Park . Boston . Mass .. July 1 .
The track was laid out on one of th e
straight sides of Beacon Park . which is a
one-mile trotting track, the portion use d
being perfectly level .
440-yard run—W . Baker, 220 yards .
that of tha t 440 yards,
F he won 't clean his pipe and giv e
I up that coal-gas tobacco, clip thi s
ad and lay it beside his easy chai r
along with a pack of pipe cleaner s
and a tin of Sir Walter Raleigh . 'Ti s
thus many a loving wife has freed he r
home from tobacco far too strong and
odorous for this sensitive world, Si r
Walter Raleigh is a fascinating blen d
of extra-mild and extra-fragrant Ken-
tucky Burleys . Smoked regularly i n
a well-kept briar, it makes the ai r
dearer and sweeter, and sour curtain s
stay fresher . Sir Walter is a sure cure
for nose-bite and tongue-bite . And
how men are buying it at onl y 15 cents
a tin! Now it' s your move !
FREE said,
Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company Louisville, Kentucky
.
77

78
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uses Sani-Flush in her bathroom to clea n
the toilet bowI. She can show you how t o
remove rust and sediment that choke th e
cooling system of your car .
Pour Sani-Flush in the radiator . Run th e
engine. Drain, flush and refill . Sani-Flush
cleans out the harmful sludge and lim e
deposits for ten cents. Keeps the water
circulating and cool . I use it at least twice a
year . Sani-Flush is safe. Cannot hur t aluminum
cylinder head . Week or fittings . Sol d
by grocery . drug, hardware, an
ten-cent stores—25 cents and 10 cent d five-and- sizes . Th e
Hygienic Products Company, Canton, Ohio .
Sani-Flush
KEEPS RADIATORS CLEA N
Makes 10 BIG, COOL
GLASSES for 5 c
FOR picnics, at meals and in-between ,
Kool-Aid makes the perfect summer
beverage . Children love it . Kool-Aid i s
wholesome, economical, too . Because i t
is quickly prepared, the successfu l hostess
always has Kool-Aid on hand .
Kool-Aid Ice Cream Sherbet is delicious.
Kool-Aid ice cubes add a touc h
of color to the dinner table. Makin g
homemade frozen suckers is fun for
children. All are easily made in you r
mechanical refrigerator. Six refreshin g
fruit flavors. Recipes are on each package .
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST J u ly 11, 1936
ere
t we
. I
The quarter-mile track was measured by
Mr . Goldie and Mr . Avery, assisted by
several Harvard students . and there is n o
possibility of error in their length .
Mr. Goldie noticed that Baker's left
shoe was split down a little at the heel . and
be ing called his attention to it . but th
no means at hand of repairing it . h e
thought he would risk it in the quarte r
Yeomans on scratch . I was give n
twenty yards on Yeomans . The others
were given from sixty to eighty yards .
Yeomans caught up with me in the
first hundred yards . and together w e
caught up with the others . I kept waiting
for Yeomans to dash ahead an d
make that advertised new world's r ec -
mile . At the start of the quarter, Goldie ord, but when we were 150 yards fro m
said, " I do not think you will get throug h home and Yeomans hadn't left me
with that shoe" ; but Baker answered, " I
can't help myself, and must try it ." A t
the 220-yard mark, it was evident to th e
timekeepers that Baker was in trouble
with his shoe. At 250 yards he began to try
to kick it off . and suceeeded at little furthe r
down, measurement subsequently made t o
be hind, it occurred to me that perhap s
he was tired, too, and his mouth wa s
full of cotton wool just as mine was .
The thought acted upon me like a stim -
ulant . and I speeded up . Yeoman s
only went one-half of the way an d
where the shoe fell after he thr ew it of stopped . There was still one of th e
showing it to have been just 285 yard s eighty-yard-handicap men in front of
from the start, so that he ran the final 155
yards with one shoe and one bare foot . Th e
track was not as severe on the bare ski n
as a cinder path is, but there was som e
fine gravel on the surface, and when Bake r
re finished . some portions of his foo
raw and bleeding .
me ; but, having passed Yeomans, I ha d
little trouble in passing him, and I cam e
in first . We were the only ones who finished
the race . One man had dropped
on the track and we had run wide t o
avoid him . The time was tour minute s
At the finish, J . M . Giibbons, not an offi- thirty-two and one-fifth seconds .
cial, caught 47 ., F . B . Fisk, an official . I can remember only one occasion i n
47;s., and G. M . Avery 47s ., and a hair' s
breadth over . Taking the longest time,
as usual, in record matters, it was give n
as47 3/4s .
which I was mor e nervous than before
that race with Yeomans . Burr W .
McIntosh organized the Keystone
Athletic Club, of Pittsburgh . and in-
This clipping brings home the poin t vited various trackmen from the Eas t
that the old system of tinting was t o to the inaugural meet . When I arrived I
take the slowest time if the watche s found that they had no opponents for
disagreed . Nowadays it is customary me and that I was supposed to do a n
to take the middle watch if three o r exhibition run, either the mile or hal f
more watches are stopped with varyin g mile. I was further told that I was t o
figures .
referee a two-mile walking match
refused as firmly as I could . since I
A Great Athlete's Speed Formul a knew nothing of heel-and-to e walking .
But McIntosh waved the program i n
front of my eyes and said that m y
name was printed in it as walkin g
judge and 1 couldn't let him down .
The two contestants were bitter rivals.
One represented the gashouse ,
the other the steel works . So bitte r
were they that they had refused to le t
a Pittsburgh man referee their match .
I told McIntosh that I wouldn't jo g
two miles around that horse trac k
watching two pair of feet heeling an d
to eing after I had given my exhibitio n
run, so he arranged to have me drive n
after the walkers in a horse and buggy .
L. E . Myers was at the top of the
athletic ladder in those days, or at leas t
he was until Wendell Baker east hi s
440 into a shadow . Myers won twentyeight
national championships in hi s
time . Fifteen in the United States, te n
in Canada and three in England .
Like all of the stars of his day, he
worked out his own theories on
running . He had no one to tell him, n o
highly paid coach to figure things ou t
for hint . One day he let me in on hi s
secret . It still has the ring of geniu s
to me .
He said : "Don't run on the ground :
run over it . Lengthen your stride an d
reach for the ground in front of you, so
that you pull yourself over the groun d
instead of pushing yourself over it .
You must develop your body muscles .
for you cannot lift your leg with an y
muscle in your leg . The lift mus t come
from the body . Spend next winter i n
the gymnasium jogging—lifting you r
knees as high as possible in front of you ,
throwing your feet as far in advanc e
as you comfortably can. This will develop
the body muscles and incr ease
the stride, for the fewer steps you take,
the shorter the distance ."
After working out Myers ' trainin g
ideas in the gym all winter, I found I
could run easier and faster. In the firs t
race I ran ten seconds faster than I ha d
ever run before, and the following Sa
turday I cut that time down ten second s
more. I entered the New York Athletic
Club's Spring Handica p Games
on June 7, 1884 . It was the first time
I had ever run in New York . I can stil l
feel the lost and lonely sensation tha t
engulfed me on the elevated train t o
the Mott Haven grounds a t 150th
Street . I can still r ecall how sear ed I
was when I saw huge posters at ever y
station advertising the fact that E . M .
Yeomans would attempt to h eat th e
American record for the mile run tha t
afternoon . The letters on those posters
seemed ten feet high to me. There
couldn 't be any larger letters in th e
world, as far as I was concerned . There
were eight entries for the mile, with
A Race for Bloo d
McIntosh told me in confidence tha t
when I reached the last lap of the race ,
about a hundred yards from the finish ,
two or three of his friends would mee t
me with revolvers in their pockets an d
would protect my exit through a sid e
gate . A little colored boy clucked to th e
horse, and the race for blood was on .
Hicky and Beltzhoover's walking wa s
more like a run than any walking I hav e
ever seen before or since . I leaned from
the buggy, cautioning them every fe w
feet, but my hints fell upon deaf ears .
Occasionally they would take time ou t
from hating each other to give me a
black look . When we r eached the las t
lap . I hopped out of the buggy as fas t
as I could and disappeared .
I never heard the r esult of that race .
Somehow I was glad to forget al l
about it .
Having given it picture of Baker i n
action, it is only fair to say something
of Lon Myers, who, with W . G . George ,
Baker and William Byrd Page, was
one of the gr eatest stars of my time .
When Myers retired, the sports writers
laid themse lves out to pay him tribute .
And he deserved it .
n In the history of athletic sports , Lo
Myers is and always will be pre-eminent .
No man before him made a record tha t
will compare with his, and th
ies . (They are that hadn' no man will
e probabilit
t
counted on Baker .) In seven years he ha s
proved himself the greatest runner at all
distances b etween 100 yards and threequarters
of a mile that the world ever
saw . . . : He has done what no other ma n
ever did . i . e . . hold records front 100 yard s
to 1000 yards .
Ile also holds the following records :
50 yards
75 yards 7 3 4 seconds
100 yards . . . 10 seconds
110 yards
120 yards
Mm yards . . . . 2Q seconds
300 yards
400 yards . . .
440 yards
500 yards
600 yards
880 yards
1000 yards
mile 3 min ., 13 seconds
1 mile 4 min ., 27 3 seconds
. Those records at : 50.75 100 110 120 .
200 .300. 400 . 440, 500, 600 , 8 80 and 100 0
yards were the best ever made by an amateur
. Those at three-quarters and one
mile were the best made by an America n
amateur .
I submit that Lon Myers was quit e
an athlete .
A Place in the Su n
in these days of indoor meets whic h
pack Madison Square Garden . of running
tracks laid in armories and on th e
athletic fields of our colleges and universities
in the winter months, of
Y . M . C . A . board tracks and eve n
prep-school board tracks. of fiel d
houses and gymnasiums all over th e
country, it is hard to visualize the conditions
brought out in the foreword t o
the program of the sixteenth annua l
spring games of the New York Athletic
Club held on June 7, 1884 .
The New York ATHLETI C Clubhouse
I t is remarkable that most of our large
cities have . as yet . nothing worthy of the
name of a first-class gymnasium . Th e
principal gymnasium of New York today
is down in a cellar . and so shut in by build -
ings that the sun has to make violent ef -
forts to get in at all, while the accommodations
are indifferent—nothing to wha t
they should be . . . . It is not too muc h
to say that attractive and well-equipped
gymnasia scattered through the wards o f
our cities . . . would . . . not only pa y
roundly in money, but would save man y
youths from moral and physical ruin .
whose evenings are now spent in wasting
their strength instead of recruiting it .
The New York Athletic clu b
proposed to remedy this sad state of affairs
by er ecting a new clubhouse a t
the southwest corner of Fifth A venu e
and 55th Street .
I cannot leave that program withou t
quoting from a remarkable bit of
writing which appeared there, called
A Woman's Vie w of ATHLETIC S
No wonder the old Greeks worshiped
the perfect human form . No wonder th e
women on the grandstand of the Ne w
York Athletic Club stole admiring glances
with their cheeks flushing as the game s
progressed . Curses, not loud bu t
deep . rang up from the crowd of bettin g
men below the grandstand, making th e
women turn pale and flush by turns wit h
the wild excitement of the moment .
es and of the showe e advantag
Training innovations were slow i n
coming
.
In an old copy of Outing . th
disadvantages
bath for athletes are described :
r
Before going further, it may be well t o
discuss the merits of shower baths for distance
runners. An athlete will be foolish t o
take them if they are repulsive . They d o
more harm than good if the subject does
not take kindly to them, for there is n o
(Continued o n Page 80

80
A few drops of 'Vaseline' Hair Toni c
rubbed into the scalp every mornin g
during the summer will counterac t
the drying effects of hot sun an d
water . . . protect and supplement th e
natural scalp oils . . . keep the hair i n STOP AT THE DRUG STORE and lay in a supply
place without looking greasy. Keep of 'Vaseline' Hair Tonic today . Read the folder o n
scalp and hair care that comes 'round the bottle .
a bottle handy at home and one i n
too, will you? Made by Chesebrough Manufac-
your locker, and use them regularly . turing Co., Cons'd ., 17 State Street, New York.
Vaseline HAIR TONI C
Reg. U.S. PAT. OFF Copr. 1936 .
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
With the regular use of 'Vaseline'
Hair Tonic you stand a better chance
to keep your hair . . . and to keep i t
good looking. Massage it liberall y
into the scalp before each shampoo
to stimulate circulation that feeds th e
hair roots . . . to keep the scalp fro m
getting tight and clogged . . . to softe n
the hair, prevent and overcome an y
tendency to dryness and dandruff.
(Continued from Page 78 ,
question about them being a shoc k to suc h
an athlete. and continued indulgence i n
them will affect his vitality . . . .
Some professional trainers forbid showe r
baths under any consideration, others
allow them in moderation .
I think William Byrd Page was one
of the most remarkable athletes I
ever saw .
I knew him from the time when he
w as a little boy, when his ankle an d
knee joints were not strong and he was
obliged to wear heavy iron braces fro m
his waist to his feet . When he was
about eleven he was given a bicycle .
He practically lived on it . and it developed
the most beautifully muscled
legs I ever saw.
As soon as his legs became useful, h e
began to high-jump. He fitted up crossbars
in his back yard an d practiced
for hours .
By the time he went to college in the
C lass of '87, he was jumping more tha n
five feet . He raised this height until he
cleared the bar at six feet . four inches —
nine inches over his height, and the
world's record .
He had worked out his ow
ique. His take-off was from five n techn to si x
feet from the bar. He approached it i n
a series of bounds, running straight a t
it . then gathering himself under th e
shadow of the bar itself. bounding
straight up in the air like a rubber ball .
twisting his feet and body in the air
and landing facing the bar .
A Grasshopper of the 80's
How high he cold have gone wit h
this natural spring using th e modern
W estern roll-over, or live, and with a coac h
to help him who could teach him al l
the modern refinements and econom y
of clearage when clearing the bar . I
can't say. My guess would be that h e
could have clear ed twelve inches ove r
his head instead of nine . I defy the
present crop of grasshoppers to better
that.
A recent letter from him says that h e
made a study of eat movements an d
jumped from a catlike crouch. Whe n
he was jumping. a mental picture of a
leaping cat was always in his mind .
He says. "When I was about twelve
years old and studying to develop a
style. I experimented long with the
right-hand run to give me a right-sid e
jump. I went higher that way than i n
any other. This style would, of course ,
have developed into the present 'roll -
over .' However, I was told that this
style would be ruled out as a dive . since
the head or one shoulder or arm, or per -
haps all three, preceded the last leg ,
over. Therefore . I developed the fron t
run with the twist . "
Paige held one record that has never
been challenged : The horse jump . H e
jumped over two horses seventee n
hands high from a level, dead take-off
indoors.
In talking of the jump. Page says ,
This obstacle being about seven fee t
wide and five feet eight inches high . required
a much stronger push than th e
ordinary high jump . The distance fro m
take-off to landing was twenty-one
feet. six inches.
"I used to practice for the horse
jump by jumping over two sets of hig h
parallel bars, an ugly obstacle to go a t
in cold blood ."
I shudder when I think of those parallel
bars . . fraction of an inch mistake
in judgment and a toe caught in one o f
the parallel bars, and the man wh o
tries it will never jump again .
Perhaps the most cherished memory
of my days as a competitive athlete is
July 11 . 193 6
mixed up with my part in the making
of one of the first motion pictures eve r
made .
It was photographed at the University
of Pennsylvania in 1884 by a Mr.
Eadwear d Muybridge, and part of th e
cast was myself. Which makes me on e
of the earliest movie performers. And
this is how it all came about :
Mr. Muybridge, who was a Swiss .
was commissioned to perfect experiments
he had just begun at Lelan d
Stanford University in photographing
motion in animal life. The studio i n
which these early pictures wer e made
was nothing more than a shed withou t
any roof. It was painted black inside.
Opposite the wall was the camera shel f
holding twenty-four cameras. Another
row of cameras was placeed so as t o
take a fore-and-aft view . his intricate
arrangement gave a record of the
mode l 's movements, when th e ameras
photographs
were set off in rotation by an electri c
.
Mr. Muybridge got out a prospectu s
of his work, in an effort to sell sets of
his plates.
The prospectus was called :
An Electro-Photographic investigation of
Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements
The 781 plates described in the c atalogue
comprise more than 20.000 figures
of men, women, children . animals an d
birds, all actively engaged in walking ,
galloping, flying. working, playing,
fighting, dancing, or other actions incidental
to everyday life . which illustrate
motion and the play of muscles .
The photographs were taken at intervals
of one-fiftieth of a second, wit h
an exposure not exceeding one five
thousandth part of a second . Mr .
Muybridge announced with justifiabl e
pride, "The author believes that wit h
the facilities at his command he will be
able, in the completeness of his work, t o
satisfy the diversified requirements o f
Art, of Science and of popular interest ."
I high-jumped, ran, did a hitch an d
kick, started from a standing start ,
broad-jumped, did a standing broad
jump, and cleared a hurdle for him
while the cameras buzzed and clicked
like hornets on their shelves.
The Dream Track Mee t
One of the things Muybridge discovered
with his rapid photography wa s
that the front foot of a moving horse i s
not pointed with toe down . but wit h
heel down. so that all the paintings
and statues of horses from the beginning
of time had been wrong. His first
photographs were made with wet
plates, then with dry plates . and finally
with film and then came the movies .
All of which is probably aside fro m
the point .
Although I spoke further back in
this article about the futility and utte r
waste of time involved in writing abou t
one of those imaginary contests o n
paper between athletes of a bygone day
and the athletes of today, I guess tha t
is what has been really working insid e
of me like yeast all along. My legs are
not so strong and supple as the y once
were, but I would travel to the ends of
the earth to see a match race between
W . G . George and Venzke or Cunningham,
a quarter-mile contest betwee n
Ben Eastman and Wendell Baker on
the Los Angeles Olympic track or th e
Princeton track. and a high-jumping
event in which William Byrd Page an d
Walter Marty met, with the roll legal ,
as it is today .
Perhaps it 's just as well that no suc h
track meet will ever be held . I don't
think my arteries could stand it .