Coaching and Care of Athletes

CHAPTER XXIII THE HIGH JUMP WHEN the first English Championships were decided in I866 the Cambridge Blues T. G. Little and J. H. T. Roupell tied for the high jump title at 5 ft. 9 ins. The first U.S.A. Championship in I876 was won by H. E. Ficken, N.Y.A.C., at 5 ft . 5 ins. Prior to that year it had been considered an impossibility for any human being to clear 6ft. In the spring of I876, however, the Hon. M. J. Brooks (Plate X, Fig. 34) won the Oxford University high jump with a new world's record of6 ft. kin. A few weeks later he improved upon this performance by clearing 6 ft. 2t ins. at the Oxford and Cambridge Sports, an Inter-Varsity record which still remains uneclipsed. Brooks was then twenty-one years of age, stood 6 ft. in height, and weighed I I stone. He was cleanly built, but rather thin, and endowed with a phenomenal amount of natural spring. . Brooks, who usually had trouble in getting his arm and elbow over the bar, although he could throw his feet over almost any height, approached the jump at a pace but little faster than a walk, sprang straight up with his legs tucked up in front, and got his body clear of the bar with a forward jerk which landed him on his toes-a fortunate circumstance, since landing-pits filled with sand were unknown in those days. In I887 W. Byrd-Page, of Pennsylvania University, U.S.A., who stood no more than 5 ft. 6 ins. in height, raised the world's record to 6ft. 3t ins., an amazing feat for so small a man. He approached the jump in a series of bounds from one foot to the other, and on the last bound stuck his heel into the ground with great force, went straight up into the air, shot his legs straight in front of him, and crossed the bar at right angles' in a horizontal lay-out. When in this position he twisted his body right round, and, turning with his face towards the bar, landed with his body almost under it. Byrd-Page was succeeded by the Irish-American Michael Sweeney, upon whose style the modern Eastern Cut-off style of jumping has been built up. He also was a small man, of about 5 ft. 8t ins. in stature, but he cleared 6 ft. 5% ins. in I8g5. Upon 34I