An Athletics Compendium

The LJteratureof Athletics jumping areas, and 'triple jumps' which could be a hop, step and jump above the HighlandLineand two hops and jumpbelowit. If he is occasionally harsh, then the context outlined above provides adequate explanation,and possibly explains his unwillingness to give fullcredit even to Donald Dinnie (his brother-in-law), probably the greatest all-round field event athlete of the nineteenthcentury. McCombieSmith failsto makemore than cursoryreferenceto the richcultureof ScottishBorderGames, one as strong as that of the HighlandGames until the Great War. These BorderGames, liketheir Highlandand Lakeland counterparts, shared, in the May to Septemberperiod, the 'pedestrian' population withthe HighlandGames, often on a handicapbasis.Unlikethe throwing-based HighlandGames, the BorderGames stressed running and jumping, with standing jumps a particular feature. It is therefore not surprisingthat it wasa Border jumper,WilliamHoggof Hawick,who mayhavebeen the first athlete in the world to break 15 metres in triple jumpon levelground (at Alvain 1893)possibly with two hops and a jump.The BorderGames did not ignore throwing, but manyof their throws, employingstandardweights,were 'throws withfollow', which made them impossible to comparewithHighland performances. It ispossiblyfor this reasonthat McCombie SmithgivesBorderGames such short shrift. BorderGames also regularlyfeatured two eventsspecific to them, the six pound shot throw and the 'hitch and kick'.The former wasalmostcertainlya javelin-typethrow and a similar event was held (albeit with a much heavier weight) in the Intercalated OlympicGames of 1906.The hitch and kick involved jumpingto kick a tambourineor suspended pig's bladderwith the take-off foot, andwas a standardBorder event, never travelling beyond the Highland Line. It re-surfaced, surprisingly, in the New York HighlandGames of the 1890sand the great Irish-American high jumperMikeSweeney stillholds the'record' at nine feet two inches.Indeed, the 1945AmateurAthleticUnion handbook stillcontained specificrules for the hitchand kick. The other major Highland Games book is Men of Muscle (1901) by the Glasgow journalist William Donaldson. This is not a history, rather a collection of mini-biographiesof the 'heavies'of the 1850-1900period, originallyprintedas articlesin the Glasgow livening Times. It has consequently much more performance detail than McCombieSmith's book, but Donaldsonattempts littleevaluation of performanceor technical comment, and there is only passing reference to running and jumping. Men of Muscle does, by inference,paint a picture of a dense, throwing-based,fieldevents culture, and providesa detailedaccount of the performancesof the great DonaldDinnie. It also providesa briefbut fascinatingglimpseof the Scottish-Canadian John McPherson,a slip of a manwho appearedbrieflyin Scotlandin the 1890sto defeat the giantsof the Games circuit. Up till recently, the period between 1900 and 1960 was thought to be almost totallydevoidof HighlandGames literature.Fortunately,the recent discoveryof William Sutherland's privately published Scientific Athletics (1912) has provided valuable information onthe period between 1900 and the Great War. The core of ScientificAthletics [ xxii ]