Athletics of To-Day 1929

206 Athletics of To-day Contemporary with Newburn were the two Americans, Meyer Prinstein, Syracuse University, and Alva Kranzlein, Pennsylvania, who between 1898 and 1900, jumped respectively 24 ft. 7! ins. and 24 ft. 4! ins. In 1901 a tall, thin Irishman, Pat O'Connor, was remarkably unlucky in not achieving the coveted 25 ft. mark, for he cleared 24 ft. rr! ins. for a new world's record at Dublin on August 5th that year. Equally unlucky was the twenty-five– year-old American, Albert Gutterson, a fine athlete who stood 6ft. I in. and weighed just under 13 stone when he won the Olympic title of 1912 at 24 ft. rrl ins. With two men so remarkably close to a new and much hoped for record, people waited for it to be reached almost any day, but they had to go on waiting until July 23rd, 1921, when the Harvard negro, Ed. Gourdin, first beat H. M. Abrahams, C.U.A.C., in the roo yards sprint in rol secs. and then beat him again in the long jump with a leap of 25 ft. 3 ins. Sol Butler was said to have beaten 25ft. in practice the year before, but in his first jump at the 1920 Olympiad he pulled a muscle, so I never saw him at his best and fully extended, although he had shaped remarkably well at the training ground where I often watched him at work. De Hart Hubbard, a regular little " pinch o' dynamite " athlete if ever I saw one, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 25th, 1903, and started competing in his second year at Walnut Hills High School. efore he entered the University of Michigan in the autumn of 1921, he had, at seventeen years of age, done roo yards in ro secs., 23ft. 6 ins. for the long jump, and 45 ft. in the hop, step and jump. At eighteen years of age he won Freshmen's events in the long jump 24ft. 6 ins., and rzo yards hurdles in rst secs. In the following year he pulled out 25 ft. 2 ins. in the long jump, 48 ft. ro! ins. in the hop, step and jump, and returned 15 secs. flat for the high hurdles. With three such marvellous black men in the field, who made a strange little stride in the air at the top of the jump, we were beginning to ask ourselves if negroes w re the