Athletics and Football (extract)

ro4 ATHLETICS work to bow and No.^2 than to Nos. 5 and 6. We should not offer the advice if we had not seen so many big men trained stale, and then abused for laziness, in every branch of sport. The supremacy of a sprinter is sometimes short-lived,as a man's best pace often leaves him when he is still young and perhaps onlya yearor twoover his majority. The long-distance runner, however, rarelyrises to the top of his profession until he has been a seasonor two upon the path, and then remains the acknowledgedchampion for years. The first Inter-'Varsity Mile Race was won by C. B. Lawes, then at Cambridge, a magnificentall-round athlete who stroked the Cambridge boat, besideswinning the Inter-'Varsity and Championship Milesin different years. In the followingyear, 1865,another Cambridge man, R. E. Webster (a gentleman who has since risen to the top of the legal profession, and is nowSir Richard Webster, Attorney-General),waswithoutdoubt the best distance runner of that year. Webster's opponent in the Inter-'VarsityMile of1865 wasthe Earl of Jersey, then at Christ Church, Oxford. Both Sir Richard Webster and Lord Jersey are still popular figures in the athletic world, the former being always received with rapture by the 'Varsity athletes of the year when he presides at the annual dinner w r hich follows the sports, while Lord Jersey has been President and Trustee of the Amateur Athletic Asso­ ciation and an active workerfor its benefitsince the foundation of that society in 1880. We never saweither of these athletes run, but are told that Webster was a great man at a spurt, and was veryactive and bustling,and indeed, we believe that Sir Richard lays claim to having possessed sprinting abilities— a claim, however, which at this lapse of time we have been unable to verify. We have recentlyseen a veryinteresting cut, whichappeared in the ' Illustrated Sporting News' of April 18 1865, representing the Inter-'Varsity sports of that year. The explanatoryletter-press at the foot of the picture is ' The Mile Race—Mr. Webster putting on a spurt opposite the Grand Stand.' Mr. Webster is represented as spurting gailyawayfrom Lord Jersey, whoappears to be in difficulties. The portraits