Coaching and Care of Athletes

COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES attention to the question of the athlete's quarters. Particularly is this the case when athletes take part in distant competitions. It is not always within the power of the coach or the team manager to decide upon the quarters for the team; but that the importance of this matter is ·fully recognized by authorities is proved by the fact that since I932 Olympic Villages have been instituted in connection with the celebration of the Olympic Games. Such villages give the athlete an admirable environment and the neces– sary amount of peace and quietness. Something of the difficulty of this problem may be realized when it is stated that in I925, prior to the Olympic Games in I928 at Amsterdam, the American Transportation and Housing Committee sent Mr Murray Hulbert, the Chairman, to make a survey of the situation in Amsterdam, while Lawson Robertson, the chief Olympic coach, was sent abroad on the same mission in I 926, when Joseph B. MacCabe and Murray Hulbert were both in Amsterdam. Then, in the autumn of I927, Major Rose went to Holland to make final arrangements for th€ anchorage of the President Roosevelt, and also to charter the necessary launches to bring the men ashore and the buses to take them to the training– grounds and the stadium. Lastly Gustavus T. Kirby, who had been attending the Olympic Winter Sports, visited Amsterdam to make a final report. The consensus of opinion of these experts was that Amsterdam offered inadequate facilities for the housing of the American Olympic team on shore, and so it was finally decided that the President Roosevelt should take the team from America to Amster– dam, should be tied up to the shore, and should serve as an hotel for the period of the Games. For the use of the British Olympic team the British Olympic Association rented the Lloyd Hotel, and subsequently took extra accommodation at the Boston Hotel through the White Star Tour– ing Club. This arrangement was far from satisfactory, on account of the noise which w~nt on apparently day and night. The problem as a whole was finally solved by the U.S.A. Olympic Committee, who, after the experiences of their own teams abroad at Paris in I924 and at Amsterdam in I928, set the fashion of building an Olympic Village for the accommodation of the teams · of all the competing nations. British athletes were equally unfortunate in I934, when the British EIJJ.pire Games were held in London, for the members of I40