Coaching and Care of Athletes

RELAY RACING experience, his great heart, and his known ability to produce his best effort in the most adverse circumstances. Roberts I grade No. 2 on his previous history and international experience, and Brown No. 3 simply because of that lack of racing experience in top-class international competition which alone, I am convinced, prevented him, earlier in the 1936 Games, from beating the Ameri– can negro A. Williams for first place in the individual 400 metres. Occasionally a coach is fortunate enough to find himself blessed with four men for his team all possessing that fighting spirit, like Rampling's, which seems to inspire a man to give of his very best when he is right up against it. When such a combination exists it is advisable to run the team in the order 4, 3, 2, r, and new re– cords are likely to go on the books. If the coach finds himself with one man in the team who is considerably slower than the other three it is best to adopt the order, 2, 3, 4, r, in the hope that the first and second runners will establish a lead of which the weak third runner cannot lose so much that the speediest athlete, running the fourth leg as 'anchor' man, will be left an impossible task in his attempt to be the first com– petitor to pass, the winning-post. In the past tht:: practice has been almost universal, from school to international teams, to select the best four men available at the required distances to form the representative relay team. This system has been dictated principally by necessity, but I do not think it represents the best policy. I fancy that a similar opinion is beginning to prevail in America, where they have such a wealth of absolutely "first-class runners and hurdlers that the problem now is not to find sufficient men, but who is to be left out. To-day an athletic renaissance is taking place, the like of which the world has never seen. Soon the nations of the Five Continents and the people of the islands of the Seven Seas will find themselves faced with America's problem. When that time arrives the specialized relay runner will come into his own. Coming events have been foreshadowed by American policy at the Olympic Games of 1932 and 1936. At Los Angeles in 1932 American sprinters for the individual roo metres were the negroes E. Tolan and R. Metcalfe, both capable of approximately 10·3 secs., and G. Simpson, a sound 10· 7 secs . performer. Not one of these men ran in the sprint relay team, which comprised E. Toppino, R. Kiesel, H , Dyer, and F. Wykoff. These four, kept specially for the event and trained to the nth degree as relay runners, s 273