Athletics and Football (extract)

RUNNING AND RUNNERS 69 any other sportsman, nascitur non fit. Much, no doubt, can be done by training and practice, but no amount of either can make a man with small thighs a sprinter, or a man with a short ' fore leg,' that is leg between knee and ankle, a high jumper. To acquire excellence in these branches of sport demands knowledge of how to utilise the natural advantagesof the body. Many men possessed of great natural excellences have, by a careful system of self-exhaustion, neutralised their Ready to start. gifts ; some others have also within our knowledge appeared almost to have acquired fine form from mere practice ; but these latter are very rare examples. Of runners and the art of running—inso far as there is an art in running—we propose in the ensuingpages to offer some reflectionsand reminiscences, without actuallygoing so far as to elaborate an actual manual of training. Of bookson training there are already numbers, more or less valuableand more or less harmful, but bookson