Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

350 Track Athletlcs entered a team. The Suburban runners under the captaincy of Carter won, and Carter himself captured the individual championship hands down. Conneff, the future American mile champion, came over from Ireland the next spring and joined the Manhattan Athletic Club. He was an old rival of Carter's and in that year's cross-country championship the two men fought it out neck and neck at the finish. A few hundred yards from the finish Conneff fell, exhausted, and Carter won handily. Carter did not compete in 1888, and the race was won by W. D. Day, a boy of nineteen, who weighed barely one hundred pounds. Day proved himself in the next few years to be the best long-distance runner in the country. He and Carter soon held almost all the records from a mile and three-quarters up to ten miles - records which at this writing are still unbeaten. Sidney Thomas, the English cross-country run– ner, visited the country in 1889 and established several records for distances between ten and fifteen miles. He competed on March 16, 1890, in a handicap steeplechase over an eight-mile course at Morris Park, but even with his handi– cap of 30 seconds was beaten by young Day, who ran from scratch through a field of over one hundred handicap men and won easily, although the field was ankle deep with mud.