Athletics of To-Day 1929

CHAPTER X THE HIGH HURDLES-!20 YARDS AND IIO METRES THERE were hurdle races at the tutors' and dames' houses at Eton College as long ago as 1837, and that is the earliest reference to competition in this kind of athletic sport that I have been able to find, but in Bell's Life of r853 mention is made of a match between two amateurs, one of the events included being a race with jumps over 50 hurdles each 3 ft. 6 ins. high. By that year, however, most of the schools that had started athletic sports meetings practised hurdle racing. The first authentic records of a hurdles time are supplied by A. W. T. Daniel, .U.A.C. He won the first Oxford and Cambridge 120 yards High Hurdles event, 1864, in 17! secs., and was succeeded by T. Milvain, .U.A.C. He won the Inter– University event, 1865, in 19 secs., and the first English Championship of 1866 in 17! secs. In America the first National Championship was won by George Hitchcock, N.Y.A.C., in 19 secs. and that of the Inter– Collegiate A.A.A.A., founded also in 1876, by W. H. Wak man, Yale, in r8! secs. First Championships were won in orway, 1896, by C. 0. Olsen, 18{ secs., and in Sweden, 1897, by A. Svensson, 17! secs. The first title at the Engli h Public Schools Championships was won in 1896 by W. . Pilkington, lifton, in 17! secs. The evolution of modern high hurdling has been a clear case of applied mechanics in relation to sport, from the earliest I championship times to the year 1920, in which Earl Thomson, a hefty young Canadian, who stood 6 ft. 3 ins. in height and weighed 13 stone, said what is still the last word in hurdling speed, by setting up a world's 120 yards record of 14f secs. 132