Athletics and Football (extract)

2 1 4 ATHLETICS of boy-champions is springing up, and certain boys run at twenty or thirtymeetings during a summer, and bringhome as many prizes. This early 'forcing' of juveniletalent can hardly be considered a healthysystem, and yet the practice is yearly extending rather than decreasing. Every school, great or small, has its athletic meeting now,and we think that school­ boys had much better confine themselvesto their own school races, and their own games and paper-chases, until they are good enough to compete at men's meetings in men's races. Another drawback about these boys' races is the immense amount of squabbling to whichthey give rise at countrymeetings. The onlywayfor the handicapper to get his boys together at the finish is to find out the age of each, and a verylarge number of frauds are perpetrated by boyswhoeither themselvesunderstate their ages or whosefriends do the cheating for them. So many of these ' mistakes' have there been that the Athletic Association has been obliged to pass a rule that in boys' races every boy must be prepared to produce his birth certificate if required. This, however,is a rule verydifficult to enforce, and the abuses still continue. Only a short time ago a case came before the Southern Committee of the A.A.A. of a boy who had been entered at differentsports under four different names, his ages being variously given from years to 14 years, and his height from4 ft. 2 in. to 4 ft. 8 in. His real age was16, and his real height 5 feet. This is no doubt an exceptional case,but the number of instances in which a boy'sage has been understated a year, ' quite by accident,' is large enough. A system is not bad in itself because bad people abuse it, but apart from these abuses we think the practice of encouragingboys' races at open meetings a perniciousone. If there are to be boys' races at all, let them be confined to those' introduced by members of the club holding the meeting, and to competitors who are over twelveyears of age. Having dealt with the boys, we will end our criticism of athletic meetings with the veterans. Some clubs give races to ' veterans'—a ' veteran' in the athletic sense being usually a