Bredin on Running & Training

IIO RUNNING AND TRAINING. The average spectator does not care one straw whether the men he pays to see run are competing for a bronze medal, silver cup, or bank of England note, provided the performances are good and the meeting well managed. In London and other large towns there surely would be found a sufficient number of athletes to keep the sport going; but provincial clubs in sparsely populated districts, who depend on competitors from a distance to make their programmes attractive, would undoubtedly suffer from such a restriction. Even the best sportsmen-unless for an important level race, in which it was an honour to run first, second, or third– would hardly be likely to undertake long and tedious railway journeys alone, with the intention of competing in handicaps, when their chances of winning were remote, and no more artistic memento than a bronze medal could be obtained as a souvenir. A number of athletes making up a party and travelling together is a different matter. No doubt the London contingent would as hitherto visit Huddersfield for that club's annual meeting in June. Probably athletic sports would gradually develop into club and inter-county contests ; handicaps and level races disappearing to a great extent, or be engaged in as an aid to training for these more important matches, in a similar way that the college sports are held at the 'Varsities, with the view of inducing men to run and consequently to train, and also to enable the best team to be chosen for the annual contest at Queen's. Mr. Montague Shearman compares running to cricket and other sports in which prizes are not given. Allow– ing that cricket is a sport in which "gentlemen are