Coaching and Care of Athletes

HURDLING did not come amiss to him. His efforts in relay races at 4 X 400 metres have been epics, for did he not return 46·8 secs. for 400 metres on one occasion? Nor are we likely to forget his great con– tribution to the success of our British Empire 2 miles steeplechase relay teams which defeated the American runners in I928 and again in I930. On the latter occasion W. G. Tatham, R. Leigh Wood, V. E. Morgan, and Lord Burghley, all Blues of Oxford or Cambridge, averaged just outside 2 mins. IO secs. per i mile each man, with four 3-ft. hurdles and a stiff water-jump in each lap. In I920 J. K. Norton, U.S.A., established a world's 440 yds. hurdles record of 54·2 secs. On July 2, I927, J. A. Gibson, Ford– ham University, U.S.A., reduced that record to 52·6 secs. Two days later Lord Burghley, in winning the English Championship, equalled Norton's previous world's record, and at that time news had not come through to England from America of Gibson's feat. As I write these words the great hurdlers of the last thirty years, most of whom I have seen and many of whom I have known personally, pass before my eyes in a splendid cavalcade. I look back t9 the White City, London, in I9o8, and again, in memory, see the short, sturdy American Harry Hillman, who had won three Olympic titles at St Louis, U.S.A., racing ahead of the taller Irish-American C. J. Bacon, with the game but unlucky English– man Jimmy Tremeer, who was then on the wrong side of thirty, plugging along to take third place. Outstanding among these old-time champions too is Georges Andre (Plate IX, Fig. 32), more than 6ft. in height and heavily built. At nineteen years of age he represented France in the Olympic high jump, tying for third place. At the Games at Stock– holm in I9 I 2 Andre represented his country in the hurdles, high jump, broad jump, Pentathlon, and Decathlon-surely a unique record? Then came the Great War, through which he served; yet in I9 I9 he was making new French hurdling records. When the Games were held at Antwerp in I920, and E. F. Loomis, U.S.A., set up a new world's 400 metres hurdles record of 54 secs., Andre was fourth in that final. At Paris, four years later, when F. M. Taylor, - U.S.A., returned 52·6 secs., but had the record disallowed because he knocked down one hurdle, Andre, then thirty-five years of age, was again fourth; and, what is more, he only just missed securing selection in the French Olympic team for I928! In I928 Burghley won in the Olympic record time of 53·4 secs., and then came a man of the same calibre as Andre and Burghley. 3°7