Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Distance Runs and Distance Runners 325 short " trick " distances, and he several times won amateur championships in the hundred and two– twenty; but it was at the longer distances up to one thousand yards that he was most extraor– dinary, and it was in these that, starting from scratch, he ran through fields of the best men that could be put up against him on dozens of tracks here and abroad. In personal appearance Meyers was thin almost to emaciation ; indeed, when he joined the Manhattan Athletic Club, under whose colors he did the greater part of his running, he was supposed to be an invalid. When in running condition he weighed only one hundred twelve pounds. He was all legs, slen– der as these underpinnings were, and had prac– tically no body at all above the waist. When he was on the track, however, this lack of roundness and symmetry was forgotten in the startling ease and smoothness of his long, light greyhound stride. When he ran in England in 1885 the Earl of Crawford is said to have exclaimed, at the Wigan Cricket Club games, "There is the only real runner I have ever seen ! " Meyers fir t appeared in 1878 at the games of the New York Athletic Club on election day. He received eighteen yards' handicap in the quar– ter mile and won in 55 second . The next spring at the games of the Staten Island Athletic Club he won the same distance from scratch in 54