Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

The Jumps and the Pole-Vault 375 where the pole would touch the bar, and the arms are in a natural position for a strong upward pull. Two marks, one about fifty and one about one hundred feet from the take-off, are used, as in the broad jump, and in approaching the bar the vaulter attains -as nearly as he can, encumbered by the pole - top speed. The body turns as the vaulter clears the bar, and he lands, as from the high jump, facing the direction from which he left the ground. The first vaulter in this country to attain anything like our present championship form was H. H. Baxter of the New York Athletic Club. Baxter was nearly six feet two, weighed one hundred fifty pounds, and he cleared I I feet 5 inches. During the middle eighties he was champion for four consecutive years. None of the American club athletes of that time sur– passed Baxter's records, although E. L. Stone, the Englishman, who visited this country in I 889 and won the national championship in that year, had an English record of 1 r feet 7 inches. The pole-vault has always been rather favored by un~ dergraduates, on account, doubtless, of its novelty and picturesqueness and the comparative ease with which almost anybody can learn the knack of lifting himself a respectable distance into the air. Of late years it has been the college athletes who have set the pace in this event and made the records. With the exception of 1901, which hap-