The Fourth Olympiad London 1908 (extracts)

twenty-six miles, into London. It was fully expected that as many as before would be present in the tadium on the aturday. ~ ortunately the weather was fine. Fortunately, too, Her Majesty, on her appearance and before she went away, received the welcoming cheers of a larger number of her subjects than had ever greeted her in one place before. Nor was the athletic merit of the events she witnes ed unworthy of so interesting a day. We saw, almost without realising the marvel on which we looked, a man covering 110 metres of ground and ten flights of hurdles in faster time than any human being had been able to accomplish the feat before that day. His terrific pace wa. only visible when it was observed that he fini hed four yard ahead of an athlete who had equalled the previous record for the world. It was a fact significant of much that had gone before. The limitation of entries, large as was their eventual total, had had the valuabl result of substituting quality for quantity. No one started who had not been selected by hi country as one of her best twelve in each particular event. As a con equence many men whom we saw "beaten out of sight" in the preliminary heats were champions in their own country. It was difficult to realise the high average le,·el of all the performances without remembering this. But in the hurdle race it became striking j in the 1,500 metres swimming race on the same afternoon it was almost equally clear, for in this the second man after waiting eight. seconds at the finish was still able to go on and complete the full mile in time better than the British amateur record. And if on the Friday afternoon that vast amphitheatre, crammed from roof to floor, had beheld in the finish of the Marathon Race the utmost limit to which virile resolution in the athlete's struggle for succ ss can strain the endurance of the human frame, on Saturday we beheld one of the mo t extraordinary instances of perfect skill and speed to which careful training and unimpaired energy can exalt a healthy man. No better introduction could have been wished to the ceremony of the prize-giving. That ceremony was, for purposes of convenience, divided into two part ; and the separate processions involved were organised and marshalled by those officials from the Polytechnic to whom the Olympic Council had already been indebted for so much good work 0f the ame nature. Her Majesty did not arrive till four o'clock. At a quarter-past two the first proce sions, containing winners of second and third prizes and diplomas of merit, together with a few of the recipients of the commemorative medals, were lined up on the east side of the truck, and the band of the Grenadier Guards, placed at the north-we t corner of the cycle-track, played a selec– tion from the national anthems of all the competing nations. At half– past two the bugles of the Irish Guards, who were present twenty-four AA