Athletics of To-Day 1929

The Growth of Modern Athletics 25 For the proper understanding, however, of this history of athletics it will be necessary for us to go back a good many years. There is one peculiar circumstance about our English Championships which, although imposing a very real hardship upon some British athletes, who would be justly proud of a championship title, yet gives us the opportunity, year by year, of measuring our native prowess against some of the best men the other nations are able to produce. The fact is that the English A.A.A. Championships are open to the whole world, while competitions at the meetings of other nations are confined to men of each nation in question. This state of things has, undoubtedly, had an adverse effect upon English athletics, although not so much upon the track as in the field events, in which the foreigners have gradually become our masters. A great many of our English titles have gone abroad as the years have passed, but many of those that w re lost would most certainly have remained at home had the University men continued to support the championships as they did at first, and as th y now again are doing. From the year r8 o, in which the championship meeting c as d to be held in the spring, we find the letters O.U.A.. or .U.A.C. app aring more and more rar ly after the names f the winners of cham– pionship honours, until we come to the post-War period, of which I shall write more fully a little later on. It is easy enough to understand the d ire of our athl tes to meet those of other nations in the early days of organised athletic , for at that time international athletic matches, except for fixtur s like the one in which a L.A.. team made a successful raid upon Ir land in r877, were hardly thought of. From the early nin ties onwards the case was entirely diff rent. Between r887 and r8gr teams from the Manhattan A.. and the New York A.. visited England for the purpose of com– peting at the A.A.A. hampionships. But I think the first real team test with an international flavour must be adjudged the match at Queen's Club, London, on July r6th, r8g4, when Oxford University defeated Yale University, U.S.A., by 5 .. events to 3t events. In the following year ambridge Univer-