Athletics and Football (extract)

ATHLETIC SPORTS IN ENGLAND 47 This is no doubt an allusion to 4 hare and hounds,' and Strutt himself, writingin 1801,gives the followingaccount of the pas­ time which he calls ' hunt the fox ' or ' hunt the hare ' : 'One of the boysis permitted to run out, and having lawgivenhim—that is, being permitted to go to a certain distance from his comrades beforetheycan pursue him—theirobject is to take him, if pos­ sible, beforehe can return home.' The Crick Run at Rugby appears to have been foundedin 1837, and at Shrewsburythere is knownto have been a school steeplechase a veryfew years after­ wards,while in 1845 Eton started an annual steeplechase, sprint races and hurdle races,whichcame offon the road all on different days. 1 Curiouslyenough, this is the first mention that we can find anywhere of short hurdle races. Hurdle racing, nowso popular amongst amateurs, is almost entirelyan amateur sport. In 1853 ' Bell'sLife 'has an account of two amateurs competing in an 'all round' competition, which included the following events : Amile race, walkingbackwards a mile, running a coach wheel a mile, leaping over fifty hurdles, each 3 ft. 6 in. high (the present regulation height), stone picking, and weight put­ ting; and in the same year the ' Times ' contains an account of a match betweenLieut. Sayersand ' Captain Astley' in a flat race and a hurdle race. All the schoolmeetings,whichbegan about 1852 and 1853, as we have seen, included hurdle racing in their programmes, and even up to the present day the chief homes ofhurdle racing are the public schools and universities. The pastime of hurdle racing, however,can hardly be entirely modern, as Professor Wilson (' Christopher North') appears to have been an adept at something of a similar nature early in the century. The Professor of Moral Philosophy had so dis­ tinguished a reputation as an athlete that his name should not be omitted from a chapter on athletic history. Hone has an anecdote of his ' taking down' a brother private in the 1 I1n837 and 1838we had hurdle races amt ost of the tutors' and dames' houses atEton, asI know fromthe fact ofhaving run in anwdon races of the sort there in thoseyears. One hundred yardsover ten hurdles watshe usual course.—B.