Athletics and Football (extract)

118 ATHLETICS has been quite a centre of hurdling ability. After all it is hardly surprising that hurdlers should onlybe found in a fewplaces,for the sport cannot wellflourish in any locality where there are not great facilitiesfor its practice. The first champion at the 120 yards hurdle race was a Cambridge man, T. Milvain, a gentleman who has recently passed the post first in two contested parliamentary elections at Durham. The third man in the race was C. N. Jackson, the well-known treasurer of the O.U.A.C., and also treasurer of the A.A.A. since its foundation. Of Mr. Jackson's servicesto the cause of athletic sport at Oxford,as well as elsewhere,it is almost unnecessary to speak, but his reputation as a hurdler while he was still an active athlete may fitly be mentioned. In the year 1867 Jackson was the winner of the Oxford and Cambridge hurdle race, and but for a contretemps would, no doubt, have been champion in that year as well. In his heat he disposed of Milvain with great ease, but in the succeeding attempt there wasa dead heat between R. Fitzherbert, of Cam­ bridge, and J. B. Martin (the present president of the London A.C.). The result was that a fifth hurdle was added in the final heat, upon some ground which, we believe, had not even been mown. In the draw for .places Jackson unluckilyfound the rough ground allotted to him, and wasunable to make any show in the race. His great performance, however, had been done previouslyin the autumn of 1865,when he coveredthe dis­ tance in what is still the record time—16seconds. Jackson was a strongly-built light weight of rather less than medium height, the most successful type of hurdle-racer. In 1868 and 1869 the championship went away from the Universities, falling in the former year to W. M. Tennant, of Liverpool, the sprinter, and in the latter year to G. R. Nunn, of Guy's Hospital. In 1870, however, withJ. L. Stirling, ofCambridge, beganthe long line of Universitycracks which has continued almost without interruption until the present time. Stirlingmade his first and only appearance at the Oxford and Cambridge Sports in 1870, when he won with ridiculous ease by half-a-dozen yards, in