Athletics: 19o1-195o
By HAROLD ABRAHAMS
As. sit down on the last day of the first half of the twentieth century to write this article, I cannot help imagining. what I should have said fifty years ago if I had then been encouraged (at the mature age of twelve months) to write about athletics in the second half of the nineteenth. I picture myself, having just angrily thrown aside my Income Tax demand for 1900/1901 (with Income Tax outrageously raised in the last Budget from tenpence to a shilling) pouring out a glass of ten-year Old Scotch (at 50s. a dozen) and settling down to the task.
"The closing year of the century," I might have written, "wit- nessed a record attendance for the twenty-first Amateur Athletic Championships held at Stamford Bridge Grounds of 6,000. Altogether this meeting was the most successful and interesting ever held, since some dozen American champions took part, winning half the titles. Immediately after they journeyed to Paris, together with most of our own champions, for an International meeting held on a grass track on the Bois de Boulogne in connection with the Exhibition. These sports, which lasted five days, were badly managed, the prizes poor and the attendance of spectators small." The so-called " international meeting " would, in fact, have been the Second Olympic Games which Baron de Coubertin had revived in 1896, and which had been followed by the spread of athletics to countries which hitherto had displayed little, if any, interest in athletic events.
I might have continued by mentioning the fact that the President of the Amateur Athletic Association, Lord Alverstone (who as R. E. Webster had taken part in the first Oxford and Cambridge Sports in 1864), had just been appointed Lord Chief Justice of England, and somehow or other I feel sure I should have dragged in the fact that the Prince of Wales (so soon to be King Edward VII) had won the Derby, the Leger and the 2,000 Guineas with " Diamond Jubilee." Some reference would assuredly have been made to the fact that, whereas in 1851 track and field events were only just beginning to be practised at all widely in England, now, since the foundation of the Amateur Athletic Association in 1880, no fewer than thirteen other countries had National Governing Bodies. " This spread of athletics," I.should have concluded, "has led to an astonishing improvement in performances. A mile has been run in just outside 4+ minutes, over 24 ft. has been achieved in the long jump and the phenomenal height of 6 fir 5+ in. in the high, while an American has completed 120 yards with ten 3 ft. 6 in.
hurdles in 15 2/5 sec. What of the future ? Will my successor in 1950 be talking of a mile in 4 min. 10 sec., a 25-foot-long jump, 6 ft. 9 in. in the high and under 15 seconds for the hurdles ? No man can say what is in store, but with such a world-wide interest growing and the possibility of much international competition, the performances suggested above may not after all prove to be so rash as may at first sight appear."
Well, here we are at the end of 1950 and we know all the answers. A mile has been run in 4 min. 01.4 sec., the world long and high jump records are 26 ft. 8+- in. and 6 ft. 11 in respectively, and the 120 yards hurdles has been accomplished in 13.5 sec. Four minutes ten seconds for the mile (yet to be accomplished twenty years ago) is now comparatively commonplace ; a dozen runners did such time in 1950. 15 2/5 sec. for the hurdles is a moderate performance, and we have in Britain today half-a-dozen athletes capable of such time, and we regard our present hurdlers as not quite up to standard. The records of fifty years ago have not been just beaten off the track ; they have been scattered outside the very stadium. Over thirty inches has been added to the long jump and nearly four feel to the pole vault, while the best part of a minute has been removed from the three-mile record.
But it is not only the records which have been so decisively, I am tempted to write appallingly, beaten. What must strike any student of athletic history of the last five decades is the spread of athletics far and wide, and the improvement in performances all round which has followed. Let me give an illustration or two from the year 1950. The tenth-best miler in Europe last summer beat. 4 min. 9 sec. In 1950 a dozen British athletes beat 4 min. 17 sec. for the mile, the British record in 1900. More than a dozen high jumpers in the world beat 6 ft. 6 in. last year and 14 ft. in the pole vault. A score of British high jumpers cleared 6 ft. in that event. To get into the world's first ten in putting the weight you had to beat 54 ft. Fifty years ago 50 ft. would surely have seemed, impossible ; now we are talking about sixty.
What are the reasons for the improvements ? Tracks and con- ditions of competition have, of course, improved, while the number of athletes taking part has increased out of all knowledge. Not only are there many, many times more competitors, but they come now from dozens of countries, and from every colour, class and creed. At the Olympic Games at Wembley in 1948 there were over eight hundred athletes from fifty-three different countries. Increased
numbers mean, of course, that the performance necessary to win a championship is better. Better training, more scientific training, inevitably follows, and I do not suppose for one moment that even more specialisation is not to come. Then there is the force of example. Once someone has shown that something hitherto believed most unlikely can be achieved, others follow. On the same after- noon in June, 1924, the great Paavo Nurmi of Finland set up two world records for 1,500 and 5,000 metres. His 1,500-metre per- formance on that occasion would not have placed him in the first twenty in Europe in 1950. This is not to say that if Nurmi had been running in 1950 he would not have been in the first twenty. The top-ranking athletes of each generation are not fundamentally any different ; but they run just as fast as they have to to win, and it is this requirement which changes.
What of the next fifty years ? I am certain that not one of the 1950 records will remain on the books in the year 2000. In the last fifty years every world record has been beaten in track and field events. Perhaps the 880 yards' will be run in 1 min. 45 sec., the mile in 3 mini. 58 sec. We should see a 7 feet high jump, 27 ft. 6 in. in the long and 16 ft. in the pole. Something not far outside 13 seconds is to be expected in the 120 yards hurdles. Perhaps, too, the distinction (in some cases now so very indistinct) between amateur and professional will have gone, and international com- petition be so popular that regional qualifying competitions for the Olympic Games are required. Women's athletics, practically non- existent at the beginning of the century but firmly established by the middle, will have a much more widespread appeal. Mechanical contrivances to judge races and field events will be used more and more, so that by 2000 A.D. human judging will be extinct.
The great test will be whether mankind can combine superlative performance with true sportsmanship ; whether the demand for excellence will not destroy the joy of participation. Provided human beings can keep their sense of proportion and humour, the futUre seems bright enough in athletics.
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