Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics privateer's flag. The phenomenal Meyers and E. E. Merrill, the champion American walker of that day, were the first of them. They went abroad in 188 r. Meyers won the quarter– mile championship and made a new English rec– ord of 48f seconds for the distance. Meyers weighed only one hundred eleven pounds, and his body, when in repose, was not pretty. " Father Bill " Curtis told a story of an Englishman who happened to get into Meyers's dressing-room. "'Pon my soul," said he, "the fellow's nothing but skin and bones and porous plawsters." A number of Englishmen came over to Amer– ica during the next few years, most of them to stay. The most notable visitor was W. G. George, the English mile champion. He contested a triple match with Meyers - a mile, a three-quar– ters, and a half. Meyers won the half easily enough and George the mile; the three-quarters was taken by George. In 1884 Meyers went abroad again, this time accompanied by several other American athletes. The only ones of these to distinguish themselves were W. H. Meek, who won the seven-mile championship walk and sev– eral other walking races, and Meyers himself, whose triumphal course has been described in another place. In 1885 Meyers again went abroad and again beat everything in sight. In 1885 a team of Irish athletes visited Canada and the United