Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletz'cs in the Colleges 269 regatta of that year. Something of an idea of the desultory character of the running of that day may be gathered from the fact that the contestants in those Saratoga races were quite as likely as not to have rowed in the varsity boat the day before. Of course, for a runner to subject his legs to the heavy leg drive of sliding-seat rowing is about as fatal to speed as it would be to attach to them a ball and chain. The crude races at Saratoga in the summer of 1874 aroused a great deal of inter– est, however, and in commenting on them the Harvard Advocate expre sed a sentiment that was shared in other colleges when it said editori– ally: " A new door has been opened for men who really mean to be what they ought physically, and it is pleasant to see already signs of a brisk rivalry in this direction. The legs - long neglected memhers - are now to be put to their best, and at last we have the various foot contests so well known in the British universities." There were five events at the first meet in 187 4 - the mile, the one-hundred-yard dash, the three-mile run, the one-hundred-twenty-yard hurdles, and the seven-mile walk. This latter preposterous and distressing contest was much thought of in tho e days, and the audiences of the late seventies and early eighties took a more vigorous interest in such events than, curiously enough, they did in the sprints and hurdles. The results of this first