Why? The Science of Athletics

RECORDS AND RECORD BREAKING 1 75 offer a more fruitful scope for investigation than do the field events, where the complication of improved impedimenta and technique both enter in to upset one's calculations. In connection with the subject of records and record breaking it is a mistaken, but prevalent, notion that the giants of track and field of the earlies would have no chance against the so-called "super-athletes" of modern times. This may be -true in relation to such events as the pole vault, hammer, javelin and discus throws, simply because in the pole vault the replacement of the solid wood vault– ing pole by the supple bamboo and the introduction of the slideway have made an enormous difference to the height a man can vault, just as the wire shaft to the hammer and the much better make of discus and javelin in comparison with those in use at the time of the Igo8 Olympic Games in London now make it possible for a man to throw distances which our athletic forefathers would have re– garded as miraculous. In relation to field events which depend entirely upon the athlete's- personal efforts unaffected by impedimenta, we find that technique appears to be the decisive factor in record breaking. Mike Sweeney, U.S.A., was the first man to discover the unalterable fundamental principle of high jumping, which is that all the heavy parts of the body must be brought down to the common centre of gravity in .bar– clearance, and in I8g6 he jumped 6 ft. 5 s/8th ins. That height was _not beaten for thirty-four years, and was then only excelled after Geo. Horine, U.S.A., had invented an entirely new style, called the Western Roll. In the last few years, however, several high jumpers, using the Sweeney style, or an adaptation of it, have beaten 6! ft., of whom the greatest is Geo. Spitz, U.S.A. who has cleared 6ft. 8! ins. But even that is less than a 4% increase. In the Horine style, however, Waiter Marty, U.S.A., has now raised the world's record to 6 ft. gl ins., while E. Burke, an American negro, has a record of 6 ft. Io ms. awaiting acceptance.