Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Hurdling and Hurdlers 35 s the toe of the leading leg again and resuming his stride. When a green runner first starts learning to hurdle, this fault is always accentuated, and a lot of valuable time is lost in taking the hurdles too high. Nowadays the leading leg is bent scarcely at all - a matter which depends, of course, on the hurdler's length of limb and the amount of "spring" he 'has in him-and the runner almost steps over the hurdle just as, in a lesser way, he would step over a stone that lay in his path. Men like Kranzlein, for instance, of great length of limb and extraordinary natural spring, seem scarce! y to notice the obstacles at all. The slight hesitation and gathering of one's self together for the spring, which any man, who has never tried the hurdles, must feel when first negotiating the three-feet-six fences, disappears completely, and the ten leaps represent merely so many exaggerated running strides. In the low " two-twenty " hurdles sprinting ability is decidedly an es ential; in the high hurdles skill in taking the ob tacles is more im– portant. The high hurdles are placed only ten yards apart instead of twenty yards, as in the case of the low hurdles, and it is obviously a very difficult thing to work up any particular sprinting speed in the three strides which are made between the fences. For this reason the high hurdler must learn to reach the first hurdle at top speed