Athletics of To-Day 1929

10 Athletics of To-day may have founded its annual sports at an even earlier date. One hesitates, however, to suggest that schools were not holding sports meetings much earlier than the middle of the nineteenth century. A journalist in his report of Merchant Taylors' School Sports, I86g, states, 11 The early days of athletics can bring forward Merchant Taylors as one of the first schools to cultivate the athletic taste, and, as far back as memory can recall, there is strong evidence of this particular branch of youthful zeal having received a fair support from the authorities." This writer goes on, further, to speak of the importance of athletics at schools having been well under– stood, and the sport catered for, fully forty years earlier, i.e. in the thirties of last century. The years in which other important schools commenced their annual sports are Rugby, I856, Winchest r, I857, and Westminster and Chart rhous , I86r. But by I86o it may be said that athletic sports had become an accepted and popular part of public school and coli ge life. It will be s en, therefore, that both Oxford and Cambridge w re in good case for drawing recruits from among the allege athletes and the Fresh1nen who were coming up from the Public chools when the Inter– University ports were instituted in I864. Before this important event took place, however, the amateurs outside the Universities had been by no means idle. In I86I a sports meeting was promoted by the West London Rowing lub for its memb rs, and in I86z the first Op n Amat ur M eting was held. A Mr. W. Pric , who was a gr at patron of pedestriani m, offered a cup to be compet d for by amateurs only at Hackney Wick on July 2 th. In that race it is interesting to note that W. :M. hinnery, who was English I and 4 Miles Champion in I868 and I86g, finish d second to a Mr. picer of the Honourable Artillery ompany. Another comp titor, the late Mr. Walter Rye, L.A.C. (whose portrait is given on late I, To. 4), died in I929, but at ighty– five years of age was the oldest living Engli h champion, he having acquired the 7 miles walking title in r . He ran his first race in I86r, when seventeen and a half years of ag , in a