Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

372 Track Athletics run some 80 to 1 oo feet behind the take-off, get into their stride at a point 50 or 60 feet back of the string-piece, aim to reach the take-off at top speed and to strike it squarely, and then trust to their lucky stars. While in the air the broad jumper draws his knees as high up as he can and holds them there until just before he is about to land, when the legs are thrust out as far as possible. It is this movement which often gives the jumper the appearance, toward the end of his flight, of having taken a fresh start. The record jumps of recent years make the jumping of the eighties and early nineties look rather small. The amateur record in this coun– try from 1881 until 1886 was held by J. S. Voor– hees of the Manhattan Athletic Club, at 22 feet 7!- inches, and during these years the national amateur championships were annually won with jumps of from one to two feet shorter, while at Mott Haven the best record up to 1887 was 21 feet 3! inches. In that year, T. S. Shearman, Jr., of Yale won with a jump of 21 feet 11 inches, a victory which he repeated in the two succeeding seasons, winning in 1889, with a leap of 22 feet 6 inches. Victor Mapes of Columbia, E. B. Bloss of Harvard, and L. P. Sheldon of Yale, all kept the figures well up toward 2 3 feet, and, finally, in 1898, Meyer Prinstein of Syracuse University smashed all previous Mott Haven records with a