Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

The Weights and Weight- Throwers 379 tradition runs, and the Celts particularly seem to take by nature to the sport of throwing the weights. Whether on this side of the water or on the other, it has been the Flanagans and Mitchells and Kieleys and Horgans and Barrys who have, from year to year, most often dug up turf at the farthest distance from the line of the seven-foot circle or the edge of the take-off joist. There is a tradition that the hurling of the chariot wheel - a sport which we presume was practised when there were still kings in Ireland, was the genesis of hammer-throwing, while shot-putting, which is said to have come down from the High– lands, is, of course, a mere refining on the primi– tive throwing of the stone. Hammer-throwing is one of the light diversions in which that hardy monarch, King Henry the Eighth of E.ngland, is said to have indulged. It was not until 1866 that the weight of the hammer-head was set in Eng– land at sixteen pounds, and there was at that time no limit to the length of the handle, which, until 1896, was of wood. The English threw from a nine-foot circle until 187 5, and put from a seven-foot square. In that year both areas were changed to seven-foot circle , which, in 1886, were again changed to circles whose diameters were nine feet. In America from 1876 to 1886 the hammer head, without the handle, \ eighed sixteen pounds, and the length of the handle