Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

260 Track Athletics and pioneer. It was the New York Athletic Club which held the first winter indoor games, in I 878, in what is now Madison Square Garden, and it was under the same auspices that, in 1877 and in 1883 respectively, the first steeplechase and the first cross-country race were held. Not only was this club the pioneer of such organizations, but it was destined to increase in wealth and impor– tance for many years, and to survive with at least a measure of its acquired prestige when many of its later rivals had succumbed to a decline in interest in club athletics or the blight of profes– sionalism. The success of the New York Athletic C]ub started other clubs patterned on similar lines all about the metropolis. Staten Island, with its fresh air and open country and quiet water, only a ferry-boat's journey from the heart of the city- seemingly a sort of paradise for the office slave - was naturally one of the first to follow suit. The Staten Island Athletic Club was or– ganized in 1876. The boating clubs, which up to that time had represented the athletic activity of the island, were soon, to a considerable extent, drawn into it, and another band of recruits had been added to the now rapidly growing track– athletic army. The Manhattan Athletic Club, subsequently to become the ill-starred Knicker– bocker, started up as a strong and active rival of