Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

International Games English climate is to reduce the athlete's power both of sprinting per se and of sprinting at the finish of the race." That the American climate has just the opposite effect on English sprinters was suggested by the experience of the English team which contested here in 1895. The heat was extremely oppressive at the time the games were held in New York, most of the English team were more or less under the weather, and sev– eral were positively ill, yet one of the sprinters in spite of his wretched condition went consid– erably above his previous best. The enervating effect of the English climate on American athletes has been shown on various occasions ever since I 869, when the Harvard four-oar was sent over to compete on the Thames. With the same amount of work that would have been sufficient at home the men became so stale that two substi– tutes had to be put in the boat. In the race the " subs" - probably because of the brevity of their training-pulled the strongest oars in the boat. The Yale track team which met Oxford in I 894 had a similar experience - accentuated probably by the fact that instead of training at Brighton or elsewhere on the coast they trained in the warm Thames Valley. Cornell and Yale crews which have rowed at Henley have suffered the same sorry experience. The Harvard-Yale team, which went abroad in I 899, got their land legs at