Coaching and Care of Athletes

. COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES that celebration of the Games he won the cross-country race of about 8ooo metres in 45 mins. r r ·6 secs. What h e might have done at Berlin had the VIth Games been held there in 1916 we can only surmise. The matter which really interests us is that at Antwerp in 1920 the diminutive Kolehmainen won the Marathon race in 2 hrs. 32 mins. 35·8 secs. The athletic history of his even more amazing countryman Paavo Nurini (Plate VII, Fig. 19), who inherited Kolehmainen's laurels, has been related already, so I shall content myself by say– ing that after his Olympic triumphs in r 920, r 924, and I 928 Nurmi's heart !Vas set upon winning the .Olympic Marathon in r932. That he would have done so I have no doubt, but he had been suspended by the I.A.A.F. on some question of expenses, and although he made the long journey to Los Angeles, he was not permitted to compete. There is the case also of Ernest Harper, the English runner (Plate XXV, Fig. 73), to prove that a trained athlete goes from strength to strength at increasing distances as he matures and l grows older. He won the English ro miles in I923, tried the 4 miles in I924, running third, and never failed to wiri or gain a place in the ro miles right up to I930. In I936 he ran second to Kituei Son, ofJapan, ~n the fastest Olympic ·Marathon on record, Son returning 2 hrs. 29 mins. I9·2 secs., and Harper 2 hrs. 3I mins. 23·2 secs. Both beat the time of 2 hrs. 3I mins. 36 secs. set up by J. C. Zabala, of the Argentine, at Los Angeles in 1932. Again, there is Arthur Newton, of Natal, who never ran a race until he was just on forty years of age, but thereafter broke world's records at practically all distances from 29 to roo miles. There are, however, exceptions to every rule, and I shall take two to prove my point that the older the distance inen get the farther they are able to travel at championship speed. The first exception will bring home to the present generation how different were the views of our forefathers as to how much varied competition a man could stand, and how completely they must have treated athletics purely and simply as a sport. When the Olympic Games were reinstaurated at Athens in I896 the Greeks waited day after day in vain for even one national victory, until at last all hopes were centred upon an Athenian triumph in the epic Marathon race. Such a triumph seemed almost certain, for there were but four foreign runners competing in a large field of twenty-one Greeks. They were the British runner 256