SPEED ON THE TRACK

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 103, 28 October 1933, Page 25

SPEED ON THE TRACK

FUTURE OF ATHLETICS

Lord Burghley, M.P., on retiring from the world of athletics, regards as his most thrilling race the 400 metres (440 yards) hurdles at the Olympic Games at Amsterdam in 1928. Ho won that race for Great Britain in 53 3-sseo by two feet. A marvellous moment! In the course of an interview with a representative of • the '"Daily Telegraph," Lord Bughley remarked, with reference to English weakness in field events: "This will not be remedied until wo get a superman to lead the way, fire enthusiasm, and form a 'school' of emulators." "On the question of continuing to better existing times," he said, "I think the human frame is developing continually, and will always be capable of better and better speeds. Just as the size of suits of armour showhow puny were our forebears in the Middle Ages, so will the men of the future bo better physical specimens than we are. The competitive element, too, is a greart force in athletics. So long as you have one man putting up records, co long will you have twenty others striving to smash them, and, eventually succeeding." AMERICANS' SECRET. Tiio superiority which Americans were usually able to claim in athletics came, he said, not so much from superior coaching, mofe intensive or more wholehearted training, as was generally thought in England, but from their far greater number of 'varsity undergraduates. "When you have an enormous number of students —-there are single universities in America of 12,000 or 15,000 students—you are almost sure to have a correspondingly large number of enthusiastic young athletes." The "inspiror," the man who starts a wave of enthusiasm for a particular branch of athletics, is a great force for improvement. In post-war British athletics Gaby was "the thin end of the wedge" in hurdling, who had, by his example, brought on a group of hurdlors, "including myself. Saturation point in athletic records has not been reached, and records will continue to bo broken for many years to come—perhaps indefinitely."