An Athletics Compendium

TheUterature of Athletics Websterwas probablythe firstwriter to reflect the growinginterest in women's athletics after the Great War, with Athleticsof To-dayfor Women (1930). Here, I would observe that the AmericanChris Herrickhad, earlier,supplied a chapter on athletics in LucilleHill's Athleticsand Out-doorSports forWomen (1903).The secondhalfof the century saw George Pallett's Women's Athletics (1955) and Denis Watts and Lionel Pugh's excellent Athleticsfor Women (1962). The two great English technicalwritersof the pre-war periodwere undoubtedly F. A. M. Websterand Guy Buder.The latterwasstronglyrunning-basedand pioneered the use of sequencephotography.Of the two,Websterwas the more eclecticand added to his technicalknowledgea profoundunderstandingof the historyof amateur athletics. It is a revelation to re-visit the worksof Webster, to reflect that for over forty years he toiled without complaint and with little recognition in a sport whose establishment resisted coachingand all that it represented.Hundreds of thousandsof words poured from his pen, into a sport strongly basedin publicschoolsand universitiesbut weakin Britain'sharrier-based clubs.Understandably,manyof Webster's technicaland training v ideashave failed to stand the test of time but it must never be forgotten that in the first halfof the centuryhe undoubtedlyled the worldof athleticscoaching.The sport owes hima great debt. In contrast,Webster's early contemporary,SamMussabini,left littlebehind him for succeedinggenerations.For Samwas, for allhisstudyof slow-motion photography, firmly rooted in nineteenth century pedestrianism. His main strength lay in his conditioning programmes and in his ability to manage men and bring them to peak conditionfor majorcompetidons, and this was no small talent.Alas,that talentdid not travel in time. The pity is that Mussabini, unlike that other pragmatist, the American Dean Cromwell, was unable to fix his magic upon the printed page. For future generations,Cromwell's ChampionshipTechnique in Track and Field (1941) is possibly the finestwork in English of the first halfof the twentiethcentury. The immediatepre-warperiod sawtwo histories recordingthe first fifty yearsof the AmateurAthleticAssociation(AAA)and the ScottishAmateurAthleticAssociation (SAAA). Both reveal the essentially conservative nature of both bodies, with little mention of formal planningfor futuredevelopmentand even less mentionof women's athletics. The AAA history Fifty Years of Progress, 1880-1930 (1930) reveals the still essentiallyOxbridgeand publicschool ethos of athletics at that time,whileits Scottish equivalent. Fifty V ears ofAthletics (1933) ignored the rich culture of rural games from whichScottish amateurathletics hadbeen derived. In 1943, the Scot DavidJamieson penned the definitive historyof professional running, Powderhalal nd Pedestrianism. This is a wonderfulwork and the only regret is that Jamieson, who had witnessed such great professionals as Harry Hutchens and A. R. Downer in vibrant action, did not attempt to cover the history of the sport in Europe, the colonies, and the United States. This being said, we have Peter Lovesey's The Kings of Distance (1968), the richest writing on professional foot racing that we are likely to encounter. Lovesey'saccount of Deerfoot and the George-Cummingsclashesbring into vividlifean agenow as distant from us as Custer and SittingBull. [ xvia j