Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

International Games preparation, will throw the hammer about half as far as he ought to or jump a foot or so less than he has often jumped before. Perhaps it will be the other way - and there you are. · There are, it will be observed, two points of view which it is difficult to reconcile. Sport is more important than victory, and when sport be– comes a painful task it ceases to be sport. On the other hand, if you have been chosen to repre– sent your college in a contest, that contest be– comes ·without a reason for being, and you become a sort of quitter if you do not do as well in it as you might have prepared yourself to do. Ethi– cally speaking, there is little difference between failing to be properly prepared and failing to do one's best. Mr. Corbin, considering the English attitude toward sport from the seriously ethical standpoint, says: " There is something peculiarly displeasing in a public opinion that makes sports– manship a young man's ideal and then permits, even encourages, him to do less at it than he rea– sonab1y and honorably can. . . . If athletics have any real reason for being it is that in the way of sport they train young men to take up the struggle for existence and, win or lose, to do their honorable best in it. To tell them that transient per onal convenience is better than thoroughness and devotion is, in any modern theory of life, the depth of immorality." One retort which might