File:Athletics and football (1894) (14591194390).jpg

Identifier: athleticsfootba00shea (find matches)
Title: Athletics and football
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Shearman, Montague, Sir, 1857-1930
Subjects: Athletics Rugby football Soccer
Publisher: London : Longmans, Green
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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ver thehurdle, but to learn not to jump too high. The best wayto attain this is, in our opinion, to practise over hurdles thetop bar of which is loose. It may seem a paradox, but wethink it is true, that the runner can best learn by havingno fear of coming to grief by crashing into the top bar.Upcher, of whom we have spoken, probably took as muchcare over his practice for hurdling as any man has ever done,and so fearful was he of getting into the habit of rising toohigh, that when he began, whether the hurdles had a loosetop or not, he would crash through half-a-dozen of them,leaving a track of desolation behind him. His shins cer-tainly suffered in the performance, as he was in the habitsometimes of carefully bumping them against each hurdle tosee that he was going all right. The hurdles at the Old Marstonrunning-grounds at Oxford, over which so many cracks prac-tised, had loose tops which came off when struck by the leg, butrecently the Oxonians have practised over ordinary hurdles,
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RUNNING AND RUNNERS 121 it being thought by some that the loose-top system encour-aged rashness, and led to catastrophes at Lillie Bridge. The beginner always finds himself unable to do the regula-tion three stride with any success over hurdles of full height,and either has to practise over low ones placed the properten yards apart, or to slope the obstacles forward so as tomake the height less and the jumping more easy. The secretof success lies more in assiduous practice than in anything else.Probably any athlete with fair abihties at sprinting and longjumping can with practice make himself a good hurdler if hebe not too heavy-footed, and so unable to recover from thespring. The really brilliant hurdler, however, is always a clean-built man with little weight at the buttocks to drag him back-ward, and the heavy-weight sprinters who try hurdling areusually failures. Some of the best hurdlers have been smallmen who have found their natural stride long enough for thethree-stride system

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