German Athletic Champion is Amazed at Americans ’ Carefree Training Methods

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 293, 2 March 1928, Page 10

German Athletic Champion is Amazed at Americans ’ Carefree Training Methods

Hr. Otto Peltzer, the German distance runner, has been visiting the United States. The blonde Teuton, who is a bit of a Spartan himself when it. comes to training, said in Chicago the other day that he was mystified at the success of American athletes. Some of them, he pointed out, smoked to their heart’s content, others took a “spot” occasionally (America isn’t so dry after all), and crowning horror to Peltzen, most of them drank coffee! Nevertheless, he said, he was certain America would win the track and field games championship at the 1928 Olympic Games, and having said so, the learned doctor of philosophy went off with a mournful shrug of his shoulders, and drowned his sorrows in a glass of aqua pura—or at least, one may be pardoned for thinking that he did. Germany is new to the athletic field, and its most brilliant performer could be forgiven for supposing that to attain success in sport, an athlete must give up all the amenities of life, and model himself on the picturesque souls of a former generation who trained on half-done steak and burnt toast, and never considered a training run properly accomplished unless they had run themselves to a standstill. Mercifully, these ideas in modern athletics are as much a thing of the past as is the crinoline and the chimney-pot hat.