Why? The Science of Athletics

WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS evoked world-wide interest, was run in America in I 935, Lovelock again proved how completely he has, with the aid of Bill Thomas, the O.U.A.C. track coach, developed the ideal competition temperament. Lovelock and Thomas, his trainer, travelled 3,000 miles for that race, which 40,000 Americans turned up to watch, because the one New Zealander was to be pitted against America's super– record breakers and world-beaters in Cunningham, Bor– thron, Venzke, Morgan and Dawson. Lovelock won that race just any way he liked in 4 mins. I I .2 seconds, and America's Press men, who nicknamed Lovelock "the medical man in a hurry", said that he could have carried a suitcase under each arm and still come home ahead of their best milers, and that at the end of the Mile of the Century he was "running well within himself and well without ·the others". There is certainly a pleasingly humorous smack about these American· Press. reports. But we must not forget the touch about Lovelock's warming-up costume : "He wore", said the New York Times, "a straw hat that looked as though he had borrowed it from a huckster's horse, and below that he seemed to be wearing either a late Queen Anne or an early Queen Victorian bathing suit. But he could have run in a barrel and the result would have been the same. A great runner and a great fellow."