Why? The Science of Athletics

340 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS Meeting changes of climate is, in part at all events, a matter of acclimatization, and I was once told a surprising story, when discussing with a Scandinavian coach the extraordinary successes of Nurmi at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. At those Games he was the outstanding track athlete, for he gained four victories and in three of them he bettered the existing Olympic record. He won the 1,500 metres in 3 mins. 53·6 secs., the 5,ooo metres in 14 mins. 31 ·2 secs., finishecLfirst in the 3,000 metres team race in 8 mins. 32 secs., and won the ro,ooo metres cross country race in 32 mins. 54·8 secs. In my opinion, however, neither the number of his victories nor the merit of his records constituted the real magnitude of his achievements. That, to my way of thinking, lay in the fact that in the team race he dropped back yards to pace a fellow countryman, who showed signs of flagging, and then quietly resumed the lead him– self with no apparent effort ; while in the cross country race, which was run in really tropical heat of appalling intensity, he simply went away from the field as he liked, finished fit, untroubled and unsmiling, almost a minute and a quarter ahead of his countryman, Ritola, who was a great runner, and had gone to his dressing room before there began that terrible scene when men came staggering into the stadium only to collapse within sight of the goal, while yet others, who had fallen out in the country, were being picked up and given strychnine injections hours afterwards, so terrific was the heat. It was this circumstance that I asked my Scandinavian friend to explain, and what he told me was that Nurmi, months before the Games, had gone to some considerable trouble to obtain the most reliable forecast procurable as to what would be the probable weather conditions at Paris in August. Great heat was foreshadowed, and Nurmi therefore accustomed himself, as part of his training, to withstand great heat. The question of acclimatizing teams presents a rather different kind of problem and the American coaches who