Athletics and Football (extract)

i6o ATHLETICS to the highest degree of perfection, the spectator could hardly help arriving at the conclusion that one athletic sport at least had passed the line which divides the sublime from the ridicu­ lous. Three or four heavymen would come out, wieldingwhat looked like a poker of 5 feet in length, and wouldspin round five or six times like teetotumswith almost inconceivable rapidity, after which the missile would hurtle forth north, south, east, or west,no man knowing in whichdirection it wouldbe likelyto fly off. As a result, not onlywasthe sport dangerous to spectators, 'but it came with manyof them to be considered as the comical element of the meeting. Dangerouswesay it was to spectators. On one occasion an Oxford athlete neatly picked off a college scout, who, however, escaped witha broken arm ; but the un­ fortunate judges were almost in peril of their lives at each throw, being somewhat in the same enviable position as we have recently been told is the engineer who fires a big gun on one of her Majesty's ironclads. With unskilful performers also there wasevenmorecomedy and more chance of a tragedy, as they had absolutely no control over their weapon,and in their efforts to spin round rapidly found often that, instead of having thrown the hammer, the hammer had thrown them. Hammer-throwing was introduced into the Oxford and Cambridge programme in 1866, and has always since been cultivated both at Oxford and Cambridge. It has, however, never taken root at any other athletic centre in England, and the championships have, with one exception (whena Londoner beat the Cambridge winner by 6 inches, with a very poor throw), been won either by University men or by Scotchmen or Irishmen. The sport is very popular in Scotland, and has also taken firm root in Ireland. In 1873 an Oxford man, S. S. Brown (knownas 'Hammer Brown,' to distinguish him from numerousother Browns of the same college), eclipsed all previous performances by throwing over 120 feet; but in the succeeding yearanother and a greater hammer throwerappeared at Cambridge in the person of G. H. Hales. Hales was an immensely tall man, 6 ft. 4 in. or so, we