Olympic Cavalcade

88 OLYMPIC CAVALCADE of which we had not seen before. In almost all the athletic events we saw results that each are worthy of a separate chapter, but the heroes of the cinder path hailed from America, England and Finland. T ed Meredith, still merely an American schoolboy,· won the 8oo metres in the new record time of I min. 5I'9 secs. and tore on to make a second world record by crossing the line marking the full half mile in I min. 52! secs. At I 500 metres the slim, slight Oxford University President, A. N. S. Jackson, was up against a bunch of world-beating U.S.A. milers in Abel Kiviat, John Paul Jones and Mel Sheppard, the grand v~teran who had won both the 8oo and I 500 metres for U.S.A. at the London Olympiad four years before. Jackson was beaten in the race for the first bend and could find no place in the runners winding round the track, but he had the support of the Cambridge President, P. J. Baker, now the British Secretary of State for Air,l one of the most un– selfish athletes who ever lived. Baker piloted Jackson yards wide of the field until 'Jackers' sprang his surprise, which broke up the Americans, and raced past them to victory in the new record tirne of 3 mins. 56·8 secs. Another outstanding marvel of the Vth Olympiad was Hannes Koleh– mainen, the man who was the first to put the name of Finland in the very forefront of the world's great athletic nations. In a festival where all were good he was superlative. _ , I have mentioned earlier the fame both of the Leahys of Ireland and the Jaervinens of Finland. The former were all great natural jumpers, as are so many of the Irish. It was Werner Jaervinen, the progenitor of the present generation of Jaervinens, who, by being the first man of his nation to send the flag of his country to the masthead at the Athenian Celebration in I9o6, started his family and, as I see it, his nation along the road to a most ·astound– ing series of athletic triumphs. The Stockholm Olympic Games produced, of course, the triumphs of the U.S.A. hurdlers, "King" Kelly, Wendell and Hawkins, their com– patriots, Craig, Reidpath and Meredith; Rose, who so nearly ·broke the Olympic rcecord with the I6 lb. shot. Abel Gutterson, who was as near to the world's long jump record, and P. S. McDonald, who beat Rose in the best hand weight effort, and the hammer thrower, Matt McGrath. Sweden its Lindblom, Lemming and Weislander; Norway, her Pentathlist, F. Reider Bie; Canada her Goulding; South Africa, Patching, the sprinter, and the Marathon pair, K. K. McArthur and C. W. Gitsham; Greece Tsicilitiras. England her milers, Jackson and Baker, and the Finns, who won half a dozen titles, with the incomparable Hannes Kolehmainen at their head. Of Hannes Kolehmainen I use the superlatives 'at their head' and 'incomparable' advisedly, for he was undoubtedly the s<;nsation of that particular celebration of the Olympic Games. He ran heats in the w,ooo metres., stopped, looked round and smiled 1 Nqw Professqr Philip J. Noel-Baker,