Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

The Wez'ghfs and Weight- Throwers 387 the discus is thrown from a seven-foot circle, with one or more turns, in a manner similar to that used in throwing the hammer, except, of course, that the disk is held in one hand and that it is thrown flat, so that it "scales" through the air, very much as a clay pigeon sails away from a trap. The present record for throwing the discus is 12 7 feet 8-! inches. It was made by R. J. Sheridan, at Celtic Park, Long Island, in I 902. It was not long after Flanagan appeared among the weight-throwers in this country- he had al– ready won the English hammer championship in I 896, before he won his first national championship here, in 1897 - that he showed himself to be easily superior to any other hammer-thrower on either side of the water. Like Mitchell, he too was a big man - a black, shaggy, hirsute animal, the perfect picture of a hurler of weights. His first winning throw at the national championships was nearly ten feet beyond the best previous rec– ord at these contests, and his form steadily im– proved. He won in 1897 with a throw of 148 feet 5 inches; in 1898 with 15 1 feet 1 ot inches; in 1899 with 155 feet 4-! inches. In 1900 Flanagan went abroad, and at the English cham– pionships, where his fellow-countryman, Kieley, the Irish champion, had been winning with throws in the neighborhood of 140 feet, Flanagan smothered his competitors with the extraordinary throw of