Athletics of To-Day 1929

CHAPTER XXII PUTTING THE SHOT WEIGHT putting is almost as old as the hills, from which the rocks were reft which supplied the first contestants for athletic honours with their missiles, but one cannot ascribe a period to the institution of the sport ; although, certainly, stone putting is mentioned in the Book of Leinster, as providing an event at the Tailtin Games inaugurated in Ireland in r829 B.C. Un– fortunately no reliance can be placed in the recorded achieve– ments of the ancients, since Scott, in u The Lady of the Lake" tells us that one, Douglas, beat all his opponents by a rood-a little more than ro4 feet-obviously an impossible performance. In the Middle Ages weight putting seems to have been so popular in England that Edward Ill prohibited the pastime by statute, because he feared that the sport might replace the practice of archery. To the best of my knowledge that statute has never been repealed, and so shot putting is still an illegal sport. Henry VIII, however, made athletics fashionable in England and numbered among his daily exercises u casting of the barre," in other words, hammer throwing and weight putting. With the coming of artillery, the more handy cannon– ball began to replace the rugged fragment of rock chosen hap– hazard from the hillside, and in time the weight of the cannon– ball used for the purpose was standardized at r6lb. The term u Weight Putting" derives from the old table of weights and measures, wherein r6 lb. was classified as a ((weight" and 14 lb. as a tc stone." A r6 lb. iron shot was used at Dublin University Sports Meeting in r86o, at the Oxford and Cambridge Sports in r865; and, when the famous New York A.C. was founded in r868, among the first impedimenta purchased were an iron shot, 321 y