Athletics and Football (extract)

32 ATHLETICS 55min. 18 sec., thereby putting 10,000/. or thereabouts into the pocketsof those who backed him. In the same year another pedestrian, named Wild, ran four miles in 21 min. 15 sec. on the Knutsford racecourse. The next yearwitnessed a remark­ able feat of endurance, one Savagar, a labourer, walking 404 milesin 6 days along the road between Hereford and Ludlow, and going over a hill twomiles long three times every day. All the stipulated reward for this feat was a sum of ten guineas, and he would,doubtless, have preferred to have lived in the time when Rowell, and some other pedestrians, a few years ago, netted many thousands by their long ' go-as-you-please' contests. In 1791 we hear of some aristocratic amateurs on the path. Lord Paget, Lord Barrymore, Captain Grosvenor,and the Hon. Mr. Lamb ran a race across Kensington Gardens for a sweepstake of 100 guineas. The spectators appear to have been numerous,and Lord Paget after a close race beat Mr. Lamb, Captain Grosvenor being third. In 1793 another amateur. Colonel the Hon. Cosmo Gordon, appears to have assisted his friends to a good thing, as he undertook for a wagerto walkfive milesalong the UxbridgeRoad in an hour. He, however, was himselfa true amateur, as he engaged, if he won, to devote the stakes to a fund for the relief of the widows and children of soldiers and sailors. The gallant colonel walked his five miles from Tyburn to Ealing easily within the hour—aswell he might. The greatest interest which was excited over pedestrian feats at this time always arose from long-distance competi­ tions, in which endurance rather than speed or skill was exhibited. The most eminent athlete of all in this line (at any rate until the appearance of Captain Barclay Allardice) was Mr. Foster Powell, a lawyer's clerk of NewInn, whomay almost be said to have been the long-distance champion for a quarter of a century. He was born at Horseforth, near Leeds, in 1734, and wasthirty yearsold before he performed his first celebrated feat, which consisted of running fifty miles on the