Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

• CHAPTER XIII INTERNATIONAL GAMES - ENGLISH AND AMERICAN TRACK ATHLETICS THE story of international track athletics begins with the early eighties, when several of the indi– vidual athletes who had been developed by that time in this country left their victories behind them and set out to find new worlds to conquer. They found them all right enough and their suc– cess encouraged others, so that hardly a record– breaking performer has appeared during the past twenty years who has not amused himself by gilding his fame with a few victories on foreign fields. Brilliant specialists like Meyers, Page, Wefers, Kranzlein, and Arthur Duffey have thus carried their successes abroad. Numbers of athletes of lesser brilliancy have won occasional victories at the English summer championships. Even in the shadow of the Parthenon the laurel has been won by young Americans who were Greeks in muscle and spring at any rate, however little they may have known of or cared for Arte– mis or Apollo. And then, most pleasant of all to remember, are those days on which the tradi- 402