Why? The Science of Athletics

370 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS the transition to the Age of Athletic Beauty, represented by the ·Apoxyomenos of Lysippus. The first might have been simply a hammer-thrower or weight-lifter ; the second a football player, or exponent of heavy-weight field events ; but the third is essentially of the running, jumping and hurdling type. In order that Tait McKenzie's athlete should represent a true ideal, average measurements were taken, for a period of five years, of the ·fifty strongest men out of four hundred who had submitted themselves to the U .S.A. Inter-Collegiate Strength Test, recorded by means of a dynamometer. The 400 men in question had excelled in every form of sport, from football to foot-racing and from throwing to jumping. The measurements of the selected half hundred showed that our modern ideal calls for a graceful youth, lighter and more slender than the Doryphoros, but more strongly proportioned than the Apoxyomenos, and possessing a larger head and a longer torso. The modern athlete, in fact, stands midway between the two greatest ideals of the ancient Greeks, and represents a more perfect type than was ever produced in the Olympic heroes of the older Games. · The figure of the Modern Athlete exemplifies strength, agility and speed in well-turned leg and thigh, a . supple torso that springs gracefully from a well-muscled pelvis, and in a head that is broad, round and well-set upon exceptionally strong shoulders. As to actual dimensions, the ideal height of the modern athlete is 5 ft. 9 ins., com– bined with a weight of I I stone 5 lbs., a waist .of 30 ins., and a chest expanded to 40 ins., the girth of the hips being practically identical with the circumference of the unex– panded chest. There is hardly any difference in the girth of neck, knee and calf, and the upper arm measures only half an inch less ; while the head measures about half an inch more than the athlete's thigh. The breadth ofhis waist should be hardly more than the length of his foot. The pose chosen by McKenzie makes his statue, as Professor Norman Gardiner has testified, worthy to rank