Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

308 Track Athletics had won a championship at Mott Haven. Sher– rill of Yale, '89, was the next collegiate sprinter of unusual ability to appear, and one of the best runners that ever was developed at Yale. He won the hundred four years in succession, the two-twenty three years in succession, and while a sophomore he ran against all comers at the national amateur meet and won. He was good for ten flat, and it u ed to be Trainer Mike Murphy's opinion that if he had been pushed hard enough in 1889, when he was in perhaps his best form, he would have beaten even time. Luther Cary of Princeton appropriately closes this pre-Owenite period, although he ran and won at Mott Haven the year after the new record was made. Cary was a short man, and his style was a bit labored, but there is little doubt that he was the fastest college sprinter up to his time. In 1891 he won in the same day both dashes, putting the hundred-yard intercollegiate record at ten flat for the first time, and breaking Sherrill's two– twenty record by two-fifths of a second. Cary's record in the longer dash held until 1896, when Wefers appeared and all established things went to smash. It was Cary, as we have already ob– served, who ran second to Owen when he broke the ten-second record, and in that race, after a slow start, he had the honor of gaining on the champion, and finishing at least two feet nearer to him than he had started.