Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics on the field in the centre of his seven-foot circle, swinging the hammer around and around as though his whole body were a great animate spring which he was somehow winding up, he unconsciously but inevitably falls into the sculp– tor's poses, and every now and again, when his form is perfect, realizes a unity and rhythm of motion which could, with almost ideal results, be frozen into stone. Putting the shot is a less impressive exercise; the skill of it is little revealed in the performance, and yet it too has its statu– esque beauty. There stands your shot-putter, poised for the throw, one leg holding his weight like a pillar, the toe of the other tapping the ground tentatively and as lightly as a ballet– dancer, the left arm stretched out rigidly straight and veering with the balance, the putting arm drawn back into a great coiled spring of muscle with the shot resting lightly in the palm; this, thrown out sharply against the green of the turf and the darker green of the trees that surround it, is well worth a moment of any one's eye, even though our Hercules proves a duffer, tangles up his feet, finishes his second hop with a weak half– turn presently, puts no lift or elevation into his throw, and thumps the shot on to the cinders a scant thirty feet away. Hurling the hammer and putting the shot began with the Scotch and Irish, so the track