The Olympic Games and the Duke of Westminster's Appeal

THE OLYMPIC GAMES. 13 satisfied with parochial sp orts when t hey have the cha.nee of representing their c_ountry. Go they will ; no arguments can mako any d,fferenco_ t? the fa~t. It only remains to . ettle who_ther the British contmgent is to consist of a keen but mglorious mob, or of o. pro– perly .-electod, propol'ly trninod toam which will, it is to be hoped , do cred it to tho country." AN AMELUCAN OPINION. An American athlete's views were given in a letter from Mr. Edward R. Bushnell on August 9. He wrote :- " Wi ll you permit an American to take part in tho very interesting debate you havo been con– ducting in your column on England's future relation to Olympic athletics ? E vory Anglo-Saxon knows that yoru· pride will not a llow you to consider seriously the suggestion that you withdraw from participation in future Olympic meets ; nor would such action bo justified on any grounds in o. nation which has done who.t yours has for the development of amateur sport. " \Vlmt I wish to call to tho attention of your readers is the unfair a. sumption on t he part of so many Englishmen that to be successful in futm·o Olympic meets requires that you copy the a lleged ' somi · professional ' methods lL~ed to develop America's teams. We do not object to being copied, but we do protest against t he implication t hat our methods are any less amateur than yours. " ' Specia lization ' and ' track tactics ' are t ho terms employed most frequently by om· critics hero, the apparent purpose being to imply t hat theso refer to some unfair advantage which wo employ. The superiority America enjoys is the result of scientific coaching. A few years ago one of our keen Phila– delphia business men developed t he idea of ' scientific management' applied to industry, by which he meant securing the maximum efficiency with the minimum expenditure of energy. That is t ho principle we have applied to athletics, and it is t he sole explanation of our successes. You yourselves employ it m cricket and rowing. "Why not in athletics ? " Let me give a concrete example of what this principle has done for our athletics. About 20 years a.go M. C. Murphy, who coached the 1908 and 1912 American teams, introduced the crouching start for sprinters. As the result of experiments he had found that·it increased the speed of his sprinters from one to two yards for 100 yards over the old standing start. Now this method is world-wide in its use. Next he taught his sprinters at what distance· from the start the athlete should be running erect without injuring his stride. '1.'he result was to get the maxi– mum speed from the· minimum effort". What has been done in sprinting has been done in hurdling, jumping, and throwing the weights. We frankly admit tha.t for our superiority in distance running we used England as our model. 1 '' A most important factor in our strength for 1910 will be the result of the enthusiasm created by the 1912 performances. Every schoolboy in the country with athletic ambitions will wish to represent America four years hence. '1.'his is only natural, and if there were a similar enthusiasm in England, coupled with the adoption of e. • system ' to your coaching, there would be no occasion for this general lament over the results of your 1912 performances at Stockholm." Mr. W. R. M. Leake wrote, from Dulwich College Preparatory School, on August 19 :- " To an old athlete e.nd a teacher of games at this present time to renounce the Olympic Games would seem almost an act of cowardice. If we have helped to create in the mind of the world a.belief in games, may we not still help to show how truly to play them ? The curse of the Olympic Ge.mes is the thought of losing (or winning). Is it not the essence of a gam"'e;';--- ---- ---"'--':f that this thought should be subsidiary ?~t t he ma.n do his best, a.nd may the best man win ! The truo function of a game is to tee.eh nobility in com– P.etition. It is immaterial to the Empire whether England or Australia shall win the Final Test, for ' t he heart and the hump of the whole ' is the game and t he spirit thereof." " TRACK TACTICS AND AMATEUR SPORT." The controversy was at the same time being carried on in the columns of the Press· in genera.I, on much the same general lines, and it was evident t hat a good many people in the country sym– pathized with the views of Mr. Lehmann and Mr. Legge. The Times Special Correspondent ~t Stockholm summed up the situation in a Jetter on August 20 :- " There seems to be a number of people in England, for whom so far Mr. R. C. Lehmann has been the spokesman, who have an idea that if we set ourselves in earnest to compete with honour at the Olympic Games amateur sport in Great Britain is somehow going to be debased and ' professionalized.' But it is di~cult ~- think ~hat any ~f those who at present hold this oplillon seriously believe that there is any danger of the sporting spirit at either our universities or our public schools becoming corru.Pted, or of our undergraduate runners degenerating mto exponents of the beauties of • track tactics.' Wha.t is really likely (indee(i it is certain within one or two Olym– piads) j,- , ~na.t 'track tactics' themselves will become 'obsolete in the Stadium. There was a good deal of disgust--by no means. confined to Englishmen -in Stockholm this year, and if the pressure of public sentiment has not killed some of the practices which were there exhibited before the meeting in Berlin, the_y will cer~a~1ly be stop~ (and it is one thing for wluch the Bnt1sh representatives on the International Olympic Council should press) by all possible events being nm in strings. '!'hose who have charge of affairs a.t Berlin are not likely to forget how Germany's best nmner suffered this year from interference on the track. British runners a.re not going to ado.et ' track tactics ' ; but they do hope to help to kill t hem. And they certainly cannot do it by withdraw– ing from the Ga.mes. "As for the great mass of the youths of the nation, outside our_p_ublic schools and universities ·t_,,._'.ll·11-.------ -'-– tmiloub£ea.Iyoe t ell' a vantage and to the physical betterment of t he race if they · a.re encouraged to take o. larger interest in athletics than they do at present ; and if that encouragement is given under the right auspices, re.die.ting from a central authority which itself has the best interest of amateur s_port at heart, the effect can ha.rdly fail t-0 be to 1'&1.80 the standard of the sporting spirit throughout the country rather tho.n to debase it. "'!'here seems, moreover, to be no little confusion between the so-called ' track tactics ' and the mere technique of nmning. To put all consideration of the former a.side, what is qwte certain is that year by year the Olympic standards a.re going to be raised and every world's ' record ' lowered ; and unl088 , our athletes keep abreast of what is being done by other countries, at least to the extent of learning how to run properly, the British performances will fall further and further below the general standard. There is no talk of our ceasing to play our games for the games' sake, nor need we make the scoring of