Athletics (British Sports Library)

CHAPTER IV THE QUARTER MILE OF recent years a good many authorities have laid it down quite definitely that sprinting"stops short at the 300 'yards mark, where the great Charles Paddock seems to have reached his limit. The Quarter Mile, therefore, goes down amongst the middle distances. Equally it is generally agreed that powerfully built, long-limbed, middle and heavy weights, like G. M. Butler, the ex-Cambridge President, who finished second in the Olympic 400 Metres at Antwerp in 1920 and third at the Paris Olympiad in 1924, are the ideal men for what is perhaps the most gruelling race of all. And yet it does not do to dogmatize in these matters. B. G. D. Rudd, the famous Oxonian, could often show an exceptionally fast "hundred," to say nothing of a good long jump, and yet found his real forte over the quarter- and half– mile distances; Ted Meredith, holder of two world's records (47-i seconds for 440 Yards and 1 minute 52t seconds for 880 Yards), and Eric Liddell (British 91