Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics mental stimulus. As every tenth of a second means one yard in a hundred-yard dash, it is ap– parent how important, in the case of two runners of equal sprinting speed, is this matter of mere temperament. In the twenty years that had elapsed since "Father Bill" Curtis used to win the hundred, just by way of variety from throwing the hammer and weights, up to the time that young Owen proved that under normal and fair conditions a man could run in better than ten seconds flat, scores of fast men had been developed, any one of a dozen or so of whom at some time or other were said to have covered the distance in even time. W. C. Wilmer of the Short Hills Athletic Club was the first club amateur to be credited with this feat at the national championships, when he won the hundred in 1878 in 10 seconds; and it was not until 1891 that Luther Cary of Princeton, winning at Mott Haven, brought the intercol– legiate record down to even time. Among the club amateurs who had won the sprints during these years was Malcolm Ford- only an ade– quate sprinter, but at all-round athletics quite the best man of his time - and the famous " Lon " Meyers, who, although not in the strict sense of the word a sprinter, was, perhaps, the most extraordi– nary runner of which there is any record. Among the college sprinters there had come and gone