Athletics of To-Day 1929

The Pole Vault 2 35 British Empire team, 36 ft. o ins. (Pickard, I3 ft. 6 ins. ; Bond, II ft. 6 ins.; and Housden II ft.). E. F. Housden, S.L.H., deserves a word to himself, for he has ploughed a lone, stiff furrow, with no coaching and hardly any encouragement of competition to help him towards the fine form he has achieved, while Bond has worked equally hard. Mention has been made of Sabin Carr's schoolboy perfor– mance of I2 ft. 7 ins., but the American schoolboy's record belongs to Harry Smith, of San Diego High School, California. He in I923 cleared I2 ft. IIt ins., but as he was nineteen years of age at that time he would be some\ hat older than the average schoolboy on this side of the Atlantic. Sweden has for many years fostered pole vaulting as a fine body-building exercise for growing boys. In I920 L. E. Tiren put up a record of I2 ft. 3! ins. at eighteen years of age, and in I927 V. Eriksson, took the cc under sixteen-year-old" record up to IO ft. 2 ins. Records of this sort by such young athletes might terrify us if we had only the past performances of our grown athletes to go upon. Luckily, however, in I925 the London Athletic Club, which has really been the foundation stone of English athletics, lected to include a pole vault in the Public Schools Championship programme. 0. G. rossman, Bedford chool, took the first title at 9ft. It ins., but in I928 H. G. Young, Bedford Modern School, bar ly sixteen years of age, increased the record to IO ft. I in., and won the Midland aunties and Bedford Junior hampionships, b sid s b ing second in the ounty Senior Championship, returning IO ft. z! ins. as his b st effort. In the same year . B. B. Ogilvi cleared II ft. 3 ins. befor he 1 ft harterhou e to go up to ambridge, and I think there ar even better things in stor . As an exampl of what can be done with careful coaching and encourag ment, I may cite the case of my own three youngst rs, all of whom have been pole vaulting for the fun of the thing and just when they have felt inclined so to do, since about the age of four years. Dick, at ten y ars of age, vaulted 6 ft. 2 ins., at eleven he set the Bedford Preparatory School