An Athletics Compendium

The Uterature of Athletics competitionfor that great Scottish'heavy' BillAnderson.Later, therewas a steadyflow of ex-amateurssuch asGeoff Capesand Doug Edmunds to the Games circuit. After a centuryof bitter antagonism to the ruralsports which had provided the basisfor Scottish amateur athletics,the ScottishAthleticFederationfinally abandonedall pretensions to amateurism. Fortunately, the Scottish Games Association continues to administer its own Games and yearly publishes a handbook of records. It is both significantand touching that many of thesedate backover a hundred years. It wasinevitablethat Britishrural sports, crippledby the lossesof the Great War, weakenedby a decliningagriculturaland heavyindustrypopulation,and lackingcentral organisation,should declinerapidly in the twentieth century.Equivalents of the Lakeland Games survivedin Kent, the north east and parts of the south westandWales untilthe pre-war period and in Yorkshire until the late 1950s.The Border Games had a fitful minor revival in the post-World War II period, then declined to the level of their Lakeland neighbours. Only the Highland Games survived in recognisable form, sustainedby tourismand sheer weightof tradition. In the 1980s,mutations of the HighlandGames, spawnedfromtelevision 'Strong Man' competitions,enjoyed a thankfully-brief vogue. It would, however, be naive to imaginethat the Games' 'heavy' eventswill not continue to suffer some pollution from the movement of steroidal amateur athletes into the Games circuit. This transfer has possibly had its greatest impact in the United States and Canada,where a flourishing Games circuitoften featuresseparatecompetitions for women and juniormen. In Scotlanditself,a majorproblemis provingto be a lackof young throwerswith experienceof traditional Scottishevents and the recent tendencyof Games organisersto omit 'light' fieldevents such as pole vaultand triplejump.Another concern hasbeen the degreeto whichGames' conditionsshould remainunchanged, particularlyin events such as pole vaultand high jump.Traditionalistshave argued,with some justification,that the Games are not conventionalathleticmeetings and that the 'test' theyoffer is to compete under primitive,agriculturalconditions. Going into the twenty-firstcentury, it isdoubtful if we shallseemuch addition to the body of literature on our rural sports. The works of McCombie Smith, Machell, Donaldson and Sutherland will remainour window into a worldnow almost as remote fromus as the CotswoldGames of Robert Dover. Biography One of the best sportingbiographiesof the nineteenthcenturyis Pedestrianism by Thom (1813),not becauseit givesanyparticularinsightinto the characterof its subject. CaptainBarclayAllardice, but because,as alreadymentioned, it isour only account of the performancesof the eighteenthand earlynineteenthcentury.Similarly,biographies of E. C. Bredin (Running and Training, 1902) and A. R.Downer {Running Recollections,and How to Train, 1908) are of value mainly because of their contribution, albeit limited, to our understandingof nineteenthcentury pedestrianism. [ XXV ]