Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics we must mean the climate in the neighborhood of New York, Boston, and New Haven - which stimulates an athlete's nervous energy. Rem~wed from this stimulus the American athlete loses snap and becomes lazy and listless; the English athlete, at least the sprinter, when put into it can become out of sorts and almost ill, and yet as far as mere performances go retain his normal form. Arthur Duffey had as good an opportunity as any one thoroughly to test the effects of English climate upon an American sprinter. Duffey con– tested in all parts of the United Kingdom for several seasons, and the results of his stay abroad were always the same. "I have noticed," said he, " that my first races were always the fastest, and that gradually my form fell off, until, by the end of the season, I would wonder how it was that it was ever possible to accomplish the phe– nomenal time that I was credited with." Mr. John Corbin, who won the half mile for Harvard at Mott Haven in I 893, and Mr. J. L. Bremer, Harvard '96, who held the world's record in his day in the low hurdles, both pent considerable time as graduate students at Oxford. Mr. Bremer found that he steadily lost snap and supplenes , and he was beaten in the quarter mile in time distinct! y inferior to his best in America. Mr. Corbin's experience was similar, and he came to the conclusion that "clearly the eff ct of the