Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Sprinting and American Sprinters 3 r 5 any one had come to such time before. Just what it means to do three hundred yards in 30J seconds may be vividly understood when it is considered that such a performance is the equivalent of doing three consecutive hundred-yard dashes, each in rot seconds. When such a runner could hurl himself time and again down the hundred-yard stretch and not break the tap~ in less than the 9! seconds, set by young Owen six years before, it began to look as though man's limit had been definitely reached and that the best the human machine could ever do was one-fifth of a second better than even time. Six more years went by and then Duffey came. Duffey had won the hundred at Mott Haven in 1901 on a sodden track and in a pouring rain. Fast time was impossible, of course, but in the same year, on another track, he had been credited with 9! seconds, and that he was a natural sprinter had for a long time been known. When, there– fore, he came down to the intercollegiates in I 902 and ran one of his trial heats in 9f, every– body kr,iew that something was going to happen in the final. The day was a perfect one, warm and fair, with only the gentlest of breezes stir– ring; the track hard and fa. t. Crouching beside Duffey in the final heat were Schick of Harvard, Westing of Pennsylvania, Moulton of Yale, and Cadogan of California. At the pistol, Schick