Athletics of To-Day 1929

310 Athletics of To-day within a 7ft. circle. After due consideration we decided that the weight of the thrower affects the issue only in so far that a light-weight must experience more difficulty in preserving his balance against the colossal pull of the whirling hammer– head than would a man of greater bulk. The question of the number of turns to be used was debated at great length. One or two turns, obviously, would not yield sufficient acceleration for a big throw, and, of course, the whole success of the effort depends upon the velocity at which the hammer-head is moving at the moment it leaves the circle, on which it is revolving, at a tangent. Plaw, first, and then Flanagan, had proved the practicability of three turns, and now Flaxman had shown that a fourth turn was not impossible of accomplishment, but five turns at an increasing acceleration had been found impracticable within the narrow confines of the 7 ft. ring, mainly because the centrifugal force exerted by swinging a r6 lb. hammer and turning with it at speed is simply enormous, and the check effort, which introduces the jerk, described in hapter XIX (Throwing the Javelin) is correspondingly great. In the case of a r6 lb. hammer being thrown to a distance of 150 ft. the centrifugal force exerted, that is to say, the pull upon the athlete's arms, is no less than 366 ft.-lb. and the initial velocity of the hammer as it is releas d by the hands is 69 ft. per second. To this one may add that if the throw is made at the correct delivery angle of 45 degrees the greatest vertical height obtained in the parabola of flight will be 37 ft. 6 ins. and that the hammer will take just over 3 secs. to reach the ground at a point 150 ft. from the edge of the throwing circle, at which the athlete stands balanced until the hammer has come to earth. The improvement in the'' hammer'' itself, and in the method of throwing it, is clearly emphasized by the fact that when R. J. James, .U.A.C., took the first English title of r866 at 78ft. 5 ins., he used what was virtually a blacksmith's sledge– hammer and threw it from a standing position without any preliminary turn. Since those days four men at least have