Olympic Cavalcade

I FIFTH OLYMPIAD, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, 1912 89 at the second man. In the Final he waited to watch Jean Bouin, the great French ace, with a string of world's records to his previous credit, finish. In the 5ooo m€tres heat he walked away as though he had done nothing extraordinary. Then, with the spectators speechless at the prowess of this marvellous human specimen of a mechanical marvel, he won his heat in the Team race. He then went out and won the cross country race in, apparently, effortless style. At ;ooo metres he again beat B·ouin in the Final. Thus did he pave the way for further Finnish successes by Taipale in the two Discus events. Kolehmainen had always a sunny, boyish smile and that something which, for want of better term, we call personal magnetism.· The field events.comprised the usual assortment, in the majority ofwhich the Americans exhibited their usual superiority, but they did not, on that occasion, make their usual clean sweep of the board, but Jackson of England had shown already in the 1500 metres Final that it was still possible for the ever.:successful Americans to be beaten. The late Sergeant Hutson, who fell later in the First World War, might have succeeded at the 5000 metres distance had he not been up against two such outstanding world-beaters. Webb, the ex-Cavalry·man, had shown that it took all the youth of Goulding of Canada to subdue his walking prowess. The glory that was Greece had been restored in the Standing Long Jump by C. Tsicilitiras and South Africa had found the two tnen first home in the Marathon in K. K. McArthur and his diminutive compatriot, C. W. Gitsham. In 1912 the field events part of the athletic programme was slightly altered. O:q.ce 'again the 400 metres Hurdles vanished, as-did the Steeplechase, and there was but one walk. Throwing the Hammer returned to popularity, but not the 56 lb. Weight, held previously at St. Louis, U.S.A. As I have said in an earlier chapter, throughout Scandinavia, and in Sweden in particular, both athletes and physical culturists are tremendously keen upon the harmonious, equal and well-balanced development of the human body as a whole. As an aid to both mental and physical endeavour, and an encouragement to painstaking practice, I can well see the force of their arguments. SomeGne once said that "when·the British do win, they usually do so by brute force and bloomin' ignorance". One would not care to go quite so far as that, but the fact remains that when an athlete is required to Put the Shot, or Throw the Discus or Javelin first with his right hand and then with his left hand, and then have the aggregate reckoned as his total contribution to the competition, it does make him take considerable thought and pains to develop his weaker member, be that his left hand or his right, up to the strength of its companion and thereby does he usually further develop the strength of his predominant limb. . Take, for example, the case of E. Nikklander, Finland, who was 2nd tn Throwing the Discus, right and left hand, and 3rd in the same type of contest with the 16 lb. Shot. His Discus efforts were: Right hand, 132 ft.