Athletics of To-Day 1929

Athletics of To-day West Barnes and the Crooked Billet, home. Thames won with an aggregate score of 35, South London being next, 58, and the Spartans third, 94· The Spartans won in the next two years, but from r877 to r88o inclusive, Thames provided the individual winner in P. H. Stenning. His best time was 68 mins. and that is well inside ro miles an hour for the whole course. Thames won again in r879, and then the Midlanders began their day, Birchfield winning with a wonderfully trained team in r88o and Moseley achieving the honours in r88r. The men who ran in the Midland teams were all drawn from the artisan or labouring classes, a circumstance which caused no small dissatisfaction among the gentlemen amateurs of the South. Nowadays athletic sport is for all classes from the lord to the labourer, and rightly so, but there was a good deal to be said for the views of the Southerners in the seventies and eighties, for, undoubtedly, roping and betting did both prevail to an appalling degree. Authority was quickly being estab– lished, however, through the formation of a national governing body and district associations. The Midlands h 1 their first championship in r879, the North followed in r883, and the South in r884. In the North, Salford and Hallamshire have just about divided the honours between them; in the Midlands, Birchfield have been predominant ; and in the outh, Highgate had things much their own way until Surr y started a four years' run of success in 1922, which was broken by Highgate in 1926, who in their turn lost the title to the S.L.H. in 1927. The greatest record for Cross-Country running undoubtedly belongs to the Birchfield Harriers, who owe so much to their Honorary Secretary, W. W. Al xander, the Grand Old Man of athletic sport in the Midlands, for they have won the national title sixteen times since r877 and the Midland title twenty– seven times in the thirty-two rac s held up to 192 . In r 84 the ational was won by W. G. George, w aring the l\1oseley colours, in r885 by W. Snook, Birchfield Harriers. From rgor to 1904 Alfred Shrubb, S.L.H., was National hampion,