Athletic Sports (extract)

Physical Characteristics o/ the Athlete successful athletes, I have selected repre­ sentative members of the different ath­ letic organizations in the universities of Yale and Harvard, afew of whom distin­ guished themselves, within the last two years, by breaking allprevious college rec­ ords for certain events. The photographs of these men, in spite oftheir dissimilarity, show us certain characteristics common to certain figures, and marked peculiarities of another kind will accompany others. Some ofthese characteristicsare not readily detected by the eye, but appear distinctly in the charts (seeFig. i, p. 51 ; Chart II., p. 58). Sixty per cent of the ten thousand examined failed to surpass this young man in weight; while ninety per cent fell short of him in stature, and ninety-eight and three-fourths per cent in height of knee. The sitting height drops back to the twenty-five per cent class,while the height of the pubic arch, which gives us the length of the thigh, is very near the ninety-seven and a half per cent line. The position of the sternum would indi­ cate that the neck and head were a little short, thus adding something to the rela­ tive length of the short body. In glancing down the line, it willbe observed that the girth of most of the bone measurements, ^ 7