Athletics of To-Day 1929

The Growth of Modern Athletics 3 one chronicler tell us, quite seriously, that u a butcher of Croydon on December rst, r653, ran twenty miles, from St. Albans to London, in less than an hour and a half, and the last four miles so gently that he seemed to meditate "-a performance that makes the present record of rr miles r,636 yards in one hour, made by the great Paavo Nurmi, of Finland, look pretty sheepish. Pepys' s Diary is a fruitful source of information to the enquirer into early English athletic history, and from his writings one may judge that the u quality" of that age were always willing to harbour a u dark horse" among their servants, and to spring him on any fancied pedestrian, if suffi– cient money was forthcoming in wagers. That the nobility thems Ives had a fondness for athletics is instanced in the case of Lord Arran and Lord Castleham, who had heard of the prowess of Henry V and his nobles in running down a stag, and who did, for a wager and in the pr sence of King Charles II, u run down and kill a stoute buck in t. James's Park." The P riod of which pys writes was, I believe, the beginning 'of the gr at age of p destrianism. Th re may be nothing in the make-up of the present day u footman " to suggest the running prowess of his pr decessors of the se nteenth century ; but that is because, first, better road , and finally the coming of th railway and more recently n1otor cars, have changed the nature of his s rvic . In the day when harles II sat upon th throne our English roads were notoriously bad and a running footman, detailed to go ahead and make arrangem nts for accommodation on a journey, ould tra el fast r than his nobl mast r in a lumb ring coach. Tot unnaturally, in an age wh n men would wag r on any– thing and everything, the mast rs match d th ir men against ach other, and thus the long line of first-rate p destrians began. Y the beginning of the nineteenth c ntury it seems that athleti had come to be con id r d a u 1 w-class sport," but, while many pedestrian m tch s were ma , with the stakes as high as fr,ooo, there were still events for th amateurs.