Athletics of To-Day 1929

CHAPTER XIX THROWING THE JAVELIN THE javelin is among the most ancient of weapons. Saul threw one at David and thereby gave W. E. B. Henderson, the famous Oxford Blue, the inspiration for a subtle joke a few thousand years later. As a warlike sport javelin throwing has, I suppose, been practised since first a camp was pitched. It was a ''peaceful" pastime at the Tailtin Games of Ir land, I829 B.C., and was practised at the ancient Olympiads and the old Scandinavian orthern ames of the Vikings. It was Per Henrik Ling, I fancy, who revived the sport in Scandinavia, at the same time that he gave the world his wedish syst m of gymnastics. Anyway, the event was included in the first wedish hampion hips h ld at Halsingborg in I g6, Harald Andersson winning at 202 ft., with his right and 1 ft hand throws added together. It was at the request of weden that the event was includ din the programm of th int rcalated series of Games at Athens in Igo6. The best hand throw only was reckoned. Two years before Andersson ( weden) had thrown just about I20 ft., but at Athens his countrym n cl an d up nicely. The winner, Eric Lemming ( o. I, late 38), a tockholm policeman, standing 6ft. 3 ins. and weighing I4 stone, was then twenty-six years of age and had been competing inc he was sixt en. He threw I76 ft. IO ins. and thr e other wed s b at I45 ft., so that no other country ha a look in. Great Britain and America were not represented, although rmany, Finland, Hungary, r ec , and Bohemia all entered men. When the lympic Game came to London in Igo8 w enter d men for everything-except the pol vault- irre p c– tive of whether they made any sort of showing in the English 253