Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Sprinting and American Sprinters 303 the laxity of starters in these early days was only too often matched with an equal lack of skill in that most delicate and scrupulous performance - the timing of a sprint. What one might call the modern epoch of hun– dred-yard sprinting began in 1890, when slender young John Owen, ] r., of the Detroit Athletic Club came out of the West and beat the best men of the East in better than even time. This great race took place on the Onoloston track at Wa h– ington, D.C., and Owen had among his competi– tors Luther Cary of Princeton, the fastest man in the colleges at that time, and Westing of the New York Athletic Club, the fastest man in club athletics. The three were almost neck and neck at the finish, Cary only one foot behind- a proper fight for a record. This sprint was one of those which illustrates vividly how a race may be won on the start. Owen beat Cary three feet on the leap-away, and he was only one foot ahead at the tape. In other words, had they started equally well Cary would probably have won. The latter– day experiments in psychology have an interest– ing b>earing on such differences in quickness as these. By accurate and exhaustive tests it has been shown that a variation of several tenths of a second is not uncommon between different indi– viduals in the comparative quickness with which each acts muscularly after receiving the same