Athletics and Football (extract)

RUNNING AND RUNNERS 77 ning, a good many amateurs have earned a long and lasting reputation by their performancesover the distance. We have heard manyspeak of W. M. Tennant, ofLiverpool,whowonthe championshipin 1868, but to this generationof runners he is but a name. A contemporary of his was E. J. Colbeck, un­ doubtedly the best amateur of his time, but scarcelyso good at 100 yards as at 300 yards or a quarter of a mile. We can recol­ lect Colbeck running a dead heat at Lillie Bridge in a hundred yards with A. J. Baker, who won the championship in 1870, and who was probably the fastest Londoner over the distance until quite recent times. Colbeck wasa very tall, heavy man, whosprinted withhis chest thrownback, and he owed hisspeed, we think, more to his tremendous stride than to any true sprint­ ing capacity to make a rush. Baker wasa sprinter pure and simple,and, as far as werecollect, £ ran low,' in what is to our mind the best and mostworkmanlike sprinting style, with his bodybent well forward. Whether a man can change his sprint­ ing style is, wethink, rather doubtful; but it is obvious that, if the chest be not thrown wellforward, the stride must be shortened by the drag which the weightof the trunk will put upon the legs. This, wethink, the pedestrian trainers must wellknow,as nearlyall, and even the mediocre, pedestrians ' run low' when sprinting. The trainers also,we think, believein the efficacyof their craft and of coaching to completely alter a man's style, for weknow on good authority that a Sheffieldtrainer came up and accostedone of the London heavy-weightsprinters, whom he had seen running at a Northern meeting, and told him if he wouldlearn to run a bit more forward he wouldbeat ten seconds in a month. We have, however, seen so many men get over sprinting distances with all sorts of actions that wefeel doubt­ ful about the wisdom of interferingwith a man's natural action as far as sprinting is concerned. As a rule, when the sprinter has settled down to his practice and is improving in pace, his style involuntarily begins to approximate in a greater or less degree to the best model. Fromthe year 1869,when J. G. Wilson,WorcesterCollege,