Why? The Science of Athletics

190 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS every corner of the Marquette Stadium and every eye was turned upon the white dial of the Western Union sports clock which had witnessed the triumphs of Eastman and Cunningham but a week earlier. Buettner's clever broadcasting roused the spectators to the realization of the fact that the runners themselves were for almost the first time ·"seeing time" and running against the clock which was drawing them on, while tens of thousands of voices were aiding the clock in getting the last vital ounce of the runner. Then, as the hands crept round to the new record mark and Bonthron breasted the tape, the shout "World's Record !" fairly rent the skies, for the clock had dramatized the story of time even before the tape was reached and the record broken. An American writer points out, in this connection, that when Bonthron, Cunningham or Eastman have broken world's records it has been to the accompaniment of the huge sports clock, whereas their running at Los Angeles, where there was no clock, was characterized by no new records. Scientific Study by Means of Accurate Timing We have seen already how difficult it is to time a race by means of hand-actuated stop-watches and that problem is magnified many times, and great elaboration is needed, when it is desired to record accurately the times in which a runner covers various stages of his race. Without this type of t1mmg, however, it is wellnigh impossible to ·study scientifically the art and the physiology of running. The timing of a race tells us only how long the runner took to cover the total distance, but the sort of things we want to know are how long it took him to start, at what point he attained his maximum speed, how soon did he show signs of fatigue, at what stage of the race did he get his second wind and _so on. To obtain this kind of data it is necessary to employ the sort of apparatus, costing about £roo, used by Professor A. V. Hill when he made his famous series of