Coaching and Care of Athletes

COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES mentioned, who have made history in the event sui generis. For this purpose we must divide them into various physical types, and also place them in the categories of those who succeed as 'sprinter-quarter-milers' and their rivals the 'quarter-miler– half-miler' type. Both have their merits, but both are rapidly conforming more nearly to the sprinting type of athlete than has been the case among their forebears. Two of the greatest quarter-milers produced by the United States prior to the present generation of negro athletes were Maxwell W. Long, of Columbia University, and J. E. Meredith, of the University of Pennsylvania. Maxey Long was of the type always capable of showing 10 secs. flat for roo yds., but yet retain– ing the strength to run an extraordinarily fast 440 yds. In 1900 Long returned 47 secs. for a quarter of a mile on a straightaway track. He showed an average of approximately 10·6 secs. for each roo yds. Meredith equalled Long's record in the National Championships at San Francisco in .1915, but the record was disallowed on account of a following wind. Ted Meredith was definitely of the 440-880 yds. type of quar1er– miler. Before he came to the Olympic Games at Stockholm in 1912 he had made a great reputation as a schoolboy at Mercers– burg Academy, and the form he had produced in school games earned him his place in the I 9 I 2 American Olympic team. At Stockholm this schoolboy staggered the spectators by winning the 8oo metres in the new world's record time of I min. 51·9 secs. As if that were not glory enough, he went on to establish a new Olympic record in his heat of the 400 metres. In the I.C.A.A.A.A. Championships of 1916 Meredith, passing his field on a turn, and thereby running several yards more than the full quarter-mile, set up a new world's record for the circular track of 47'4 secs. At the Pennsylvania Relay Meeting of that year, in the 4 X 440 yds. relay, Meredith gave Wilcox, of Hal\(ard, a sound 48 secs. quarter-miler, a 20 yds. start and almost caught him, being clocked as doing 46 secs. flat from a flying start for his quarter-mile leg. • A great 44o-88o yds. quarter-miler of the early days was the lightly built H. C. L. Tindall, an old Cambridge University Blue who had not put up any very startling performances at the Uni– versity until r889, in which year he made the unbroken under– graduate 6oo yds. record of I min. 12 secs. and won the English quarter-mile ·championship in 48·5 secs. On the same day he 208