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

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