Why? The Science of Athletics

246 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS breaking history (I mean when world's records were actually broken) and you will get a 4 mins. 2 secs. mile, made up as follows : Taber's first quarter in 58 secs. when he returned 4 12·6 ; Lovelock's second quarter in 62 ·2, when he showed 4 07·6 ; Cunningham's third quarter in 61 ·8, when he did 4 o6 ·8 ; and Jones's fourth quarter in 58·2, when he did 4 14·4. Those figures, how– ever, represent the efforts of four individuals throughout the period I913-1934, but the "machine-runner" will eventuate. Meanwhile, just as Nurmi, with his constant speed theory, added something new to distance running, so Cunningham has contributed rather more than a world's record to the history of the mile, for he has proved the possibility of running the first half-mile as fast as the second, with a fast third lap and an even faster fourth quarter. He has, in fact, laid the foundation of the theory of constant acceleration and has proved the feasibility of conquering the previously apparently inevitable let-up in the third lap. This he has done by returning for that third lap 63 secs .. when he made his record of 4 09.8 and 61.8 secs . when he returned 4 o6.8. The nearest approach for a third lap time was by Jules -Ladoumegue in 1931, when he got wonderfully close to constant speed running by returning for his four laps 6o·8, 63·4, 63·8, and 61 ·2 secs. The claim · that Cunningham has, by running the second half of a mile race faster than the first half, added something entirely new to the theory of one mile running is not, however, admissible. When the first real inter– national match took place between the New York A.C. and the London A.C. at Manhattan Field, N.Y., on September 21st, 1895, Tommy Conneff, U .S.A., running against his countryman, Geo. Orton, and the Englishman W. E. Lutyens, who wori the mile for Cambridge against Oxford for four years in succession, not only made a world's record of 4 mins. 18 secs. but produced both the most constant speed lap running and the fastest second half-mile on record, the latter being in proportion to the