Athletics of To-Day 1929

The High Jump for England at Association football and water polo, was first– rate at cricket and tennis, and a superb dancer. Meanwhile a startling step in the evolution of high jumping method had been made in America. There they usually think things out to the nth and a bit beyond it, but the (( Western Roll" form of jumping, which has made 6! ft. and over possible, was discovered purely and simply by accident. George Horine, like B. Howard Baker, was in his early days a confirmed (( scissors" jumper; and in that natural but useless style he had found his limit at 5 ft. I in. It seems impossible to believe, therefore, that by the principle of applied mechanics he was able to take the world's record up to 6ft. 7 ins. in the space of two years; and yet that is what he did. In I9IO, just before he entered Stanford University, California, Horine, who stood 5 ft. II ins., weighed 9 stone 9 lb., and was twenty years of age, found himself in a place where the jumping pit was so placed that the jumpers could only come at the bar straight in front or from the left-hand side. This did not at all suit him, as he was a left-footed jumper and so was used to running from the right, all jumpers, up to that time, being accustomed to make the spring off the foot farthest from the bar. Horine made the experiment of running from the 1 ft side and jumping from the left foot, i.e., the foot nearest to the bar. It did not work at first, so he tried coming at the bar from straight in front. That did not work either, but the idea of jumping in an entirely new form from the foot nearest to the bar had got a firm hold of him, and in I9I2 he again tried approach– ing the bar from the left-hand side. uddenly the new action came to him, and in a week he had cleared 5 ft. 9 ins., a few days later he jumped 6 ft. I in., and on May I8th of the same year took the record up to 6 ft. 7 ins. By that time his weight had increased to II stone 8 lb. Horine, curiously enough, was not a success at the Stockholm Olympiad in the following July, and I believe the real reason was that every one was so interested in his new method and he so willing to show it that he almost jmnped himself to death before the actual competition took place. In I9I4 Dr. E. E.