Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Sprinting and American Sprinters 297 acquired by training than one can acquire six fingers, or blue eyes, or an extra cubit of stature. In the actual running of those arbitrary dis– tances, the one-hundred-yard and the two-hundred– twenty-yard dashes - which have come to be taken as our tests of speed-and particularly in the shorter of these distances, the start is, more than anything else, the all-important thing.' In no way can the distance runner or the average man who has never run at all have this more vividly demonstrated than by starting from a mark with a man who can cover one hundred yards in even time. Although he will feel that he is jumping from the mark the instant the pistol snaps, he will find that there is an appreci– able instant in which he stands practically rooted to the ground, while his rival, as if by some baffling magic, shoots out and upward and into his stride. In the ordinary race nowadays, so common and axiomatic has this trick of fast starting become, runners are generally too evenly matched to make the extreme quickness of the start apparent to the average spectator. This qui,ckness in starting is, of course, to a certain extent a matter of practice and judgment, but it is also the result of a more rapid telegraphing from the eye and ear to the brain and back again to the muscles, and as such it is much a matter of temperament and only very partially a thing to be