Athletics of To-Day 1929

ATHLETICS OF TO-DAY PART I CHAPTER I THE GROWTH OF MoDERN ATHLETics AMONG the normal attributes of every human being are the actions of walking, running, jumping and throwing, and, since the poss ssion of any active sense leads its pos or to the inevitable wi h to test its quality against the similar faculti s of oth rs, it seems saf to as ume that, so long as there has been a human race upon earth, just so long have th r been athletic cont sts of one kind or another. I feel, in fact, that I can off r concrete vidence to this eff et. I hav lived among the natives of a t and ntral Africa, who, by our standards of mea urem nt, ar as primitive as w re our\ ad-stained for fathers. These African avages have lived, thnologi ts t 11 us, for thousand , p rhaps hundr ds of thousands, of year , ju t as we .fi.nd them to-day, and, one and all, they are remarkably int r st d in f ats of p ed or endurance in running, and skill and str ngth in jumping and sp ar-throwing, just as, no doubt, w r our O\ n savag an– ce tors; for all war-like p ples hav admiration for feats of sp d, ~tr ngth, or endurance· of the human body. Ther i no r ason to b liev , th r f re, that athl tics in r at ritain rec iv d th ir fir t impuls from th Lugnasad, or Tailtin Gam s, held in Ir land as long ago as I 29 B.C., according to the anci nt ook of L in t r, or that th growth of th port throughout a wid r fi ld wa alon the outcome of the anci nt lympic ames of th r k , or the orth rn Games of the Vikings. Th 1 v of th se things is in ach ~an's bon s, and th pur uit of athl tics i , th r for , not Indigenous to th oil of any one country. This particular form of sport, in fact, has form d an integral part of English I B