Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Sprinting and American Sprinters 309 The breaking of the record for the hundred yards was not the only thing which marked the early nineties as the beginning of a new period in track athletics. It was in the early nineties, as we have said, that the standing start - one of the vague reminders of the old days of profession– alism - gave way entirely to the more rakish and graceful crouchingstart. The semi-circus costumes of tights and trunks had already been displaced by the more sportsmanlike-looking running clothes of the present day, and a man who could not do at least wt when he had to was no longer to be looked upon as a sprinter of the first clas . In I 896, six years after Owen had broken the ten– second record, Bernard J. Wefers of Georgetown repeated the feat of the young Westerner, and the hundred was again done in one-fifth of a second better than even time. It seemed as though man's limit had, perhaps, been reached, and for six more years the breathless quest went on in vain, and then the impossible was again achieved, and Arthur Duffey of Georgetown Univer ity snapped the tape in 9f seconds. In terms of distance this tiny fraction of time meant beating a nine and four-fifths man by about ix feet of daylight. The average standard of speed in the sprints so markedly improved during the nineties that it is quite impossible in this place to describe in any detail the performances of any but the record-