Coaching and Care of Athletes

THE GENESIS OF COACHING What the American method is worth may be judged from the history of Ernest Hjertberg. He enjoyed a distinguished athletic career in competition in the United States. After the termina– tion of that career he devoted himself to coaching, and produced many famous athletes. It is not on the production of American athletes, however, that Hjertberg's fame must rest. When Sweden began to prepare in 1910 for the Olympic Games which were to be held in Stockholm in 1912 Hjertberg was summoned home from America to take charge of the Swedish Olympic team. He, a man of great energy, did more, however, than that. In the two years at his disposal he not only produced a team which took second place in athletics at the Olympic Games, but also instituted a national regime of athletics which enabled him to discover all available talent. Subsequently he had charge of the Dutch Olympic team, and thereafter returned to America, where he was for many years successful in the training of athletes at the Rice Institute, Houston, Texas. Nowadays he is interested in a great scheme of 'Neigh– bourhood Athletics,' whereby he hopes to secure for boys of the working classes an equal degree of teaching and training to that enjoyed by athletes of the university class. Mention must also be made ofJaakko Mikkola (Plate XVI, Fig. 49), who reversed Hjertberg's procedure by going to America after he had been head coach in Finland, where he was largely respon– sible for the production of that middle-distance running marvel Paavo Nurmi. Mikkola has visited England as chiefforeign coach at the English Summer School for Athletes, but is now head track and field coach at the University of Harvard. He was also respon– sible for the production of Finland's early and always phenomenal javelin-throwers and such men as Ville Porhola, who won the Olympic shot-putting championship in 1920 and was runner-up for the hammer-throwing title in I 932. Mikkola was succeeded as chief coach to Finland by that great all-round athlete Armas Valste (Plate XIII, Fig. 41, and Plate XV, Fig. 47), who also has served England as chief foreign coach at the Summer School for Athletes. Where England is concerned the doyen of our native coaches must be the late Sam Mussabini, who produced such famous athletes as Willie Appleg.arth, A. G. Hill, H. F. V. Edward, and Fred Gaby, and who was largely responsible also for H. M. Abrahams (Plate XIII, Fig. 41) winning the Olympic roo metres in r924.