Athletics and Football (extract)

CROSS-COUNTRY RUNNI.1.\'G 377 the attempt to bring it off in the wilds of Epping Forest proved a great failure, everyone losing his way separately on his own account. Next year a carefully laid out course was chosen, from Roehampton over the Common by Merton and Morden, \Vest Barnes and Crooked Billet home, about r I X miles. The T. H . and H. won the first time, scoring 35 as against the S. L. H . 58, and the 'partans 94; but the last named club turned the tables on the others the next year. P. H . Stenning of the Thames, who finished actually first of all starters in I 877, I 87 8, I879, and I88o, has run the course in 68 minutes-consid r- ably better than ten miles an hour all the way, up hill and down dale. In r879 the Thames were lucky again, but in r88o had to go down before a very well trained, if rough, team of the Birchfield Harriers. In r88r (wh n no fewer than 105 ran) the Moseley Harriers came up for the first time, and b at the hold rs easily, and the next year exactly repeated the performan c. 'ince then the affair has degenerated into a gate-money meeting held on enclosed ground , and forms the medium of heavy betting and little sport, the change having been effected chiefly at the instance of the countrymen and their allies, ostensibly because they wanted a 'rougher, more open country,' but really because they wanted to take the management of the meeting from its original promoters, who would have nothing to do with gate and betting. Some day, when the loath omeness of the roping and betting has disgu ted the better c1ass of runners, a hampionship, in which gentlemen can take part without loss of self-respect, will probably be again instituted on the old lines. But betting mu t be literally stamped out, and the prizes made quite nominal before we can see who runs for the sport, and who for the profit. Meanwhile nearly all the lub (except the oldest) belong either to the Northern, the Midland, or the outhern ountie C.C. Association, which are supposed to govern their members by the A. A.~ . rule , but whi h all are ith r unwilling or unable to stop the abuses of belting and team