Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Sprinting and American Sprinters 31 3 costume he might quite as reasonably have been taken for a hammer-thrower as a sprinter. Had he trained for the middle distances instead of the dashes, there seems little reason to believe that he might not have distinguished himself at the quarter and half mile. At the former distance he performed more than creditably on many occa– sions, and his whole style of running was based not so much on the explosive swirl of the quick starter as on solid strength and stability and length of stride. He was not a phenomenally fast starter, and it was in the last rather than in the first thirty yards that he generally won his races. Wefers broke the intercollegiate record in the hundred yards and smashed all records, amateur and professional, in the two-twenty in 1896, when, on the same day, he ran the hundred in 9! seconds and the longer sprint in 2 it seconds. This performance definitely stamped him as the preeminent sprinter of his day, in spite of the fact that the Westerners, Crum, Maybury, and Rush, all had been credited with a hundred in less than even ti!11e. Wefer 's time in the hundred, taken as it was by the intercollegiate timers, was ab o– lutely authentic, and his extraordinary race in the longer sprint was a triumphant corroboration of his ability, if anything of the sort were needed. Wefers won his record-breaking hundred that day by an easy even feet from H. C. Patterson