COMPETITIVE WALKING Except as contested by the all-round athletes at their annual individual championships, walking no longer occupies a serious place in the considera tion of track athletes. The one-mile walk was dropped from the Mott Haven programme after the games of 1898, and the one-mile, three-mile, and seven-mile walk, which were contested at the national amateur championships at various times, are now no longer seen. The half-mile walk, at which the all-round athletes still compete, is retained because there could be no just standard of comparison between present and past individual all-round champions if the programme of events should be changed.
/Esthetically or athletically little good can be said of walking as a competitive sport. Natural as walking is, and graceful and beneficial as it may be made, there is nothing either pleasing or normally helpful in walking as it is done on the track. The contorted wabbling of the heel-and toe walker is the acme of athletic awkwardness, and although long-distance competitive walking requires an enormous amount of endurance and skill, the proficiency which it brings about cannot be used in any normal, natural way. If you learn to run fast and well, the strength and skill and confidence that you acquire to-day you can use to-morrow in beating out an approaching rain storm or overhauling a trolley car ; but if you are going to take a tramp across country you will never do it in heel-and-toe form, and if you want to go faster than four miles an hour, you will either trot or take some other means of travelling. Aside from their msthetic and athletic disadvan tages, the long-distance walks were also undesir able because of the tendency they had to encourage petty deception on the part of contestants. To maintain a fair gait in heel-and-toe walking the contestant must see to it that one foot is on the ground before the other leaves it, and that the knee is bent only on the leg that is being put forward. After the stride is made and the foot is on the ground, the knee must be kept perfectly straight and unbent until the foot is lifted from the ground. Obviously this unnatural position is hard to main tain, and it is trebly so when the stress of contest is driving the contestant to quicken his pace and run. It takes not only complete honesty, but an unusual self-control, on the part of the athlete, not to walk unfairly — not, now and then, to " skip " for a stride or two. The mental strain of the
thing is so intense, that even with the best of intentions a contestant is pretty likely to " break " now and then in spite of himself. The position of a judge called upon to watch a large field of contestants, some of whom may be so unscrupu lous as not to mind running for a few steps if they can do so when the judge's back is turned, is about as difficult as that of the traditional base ball umpire of the comic paragraph. Some one is pretty sure to be treated unfairly ; not every one can possibly be satisfied. For all of which reasons, and others doubtless, walking as a track contest has been dropped from athletic pro grammes and has lost its place in popular regard.
So slow, so ugly, and so stupid a sport could not, obviously, appeal very strongly to the average undergraduate, and while walking was being done in this country the performers on college tracks were, for the most part, inferior to those made under club auspices. Among these club athletes Frank P. Murray, who walked during the early eighties, was one of the most notable. Murray still holds a dozen or so records for various dis tances from one-third of a mile up to three miles. The half mile he did in 3 minutes 25 seconds ; the mile in 6 minutes 292- seconds ; the two miles in 13 minutes 485 seconds ; and the three miles in 21 minutes seconds. These records were all made in 1883 and 1884. Burckhardt of the New York Athletic Club, Parry of the Williamsburg Athletic Club, Lange of the Manhattan, G. D. Baird, and C. L. Nicoll were among the other well-known walkers of those days. At the inter collegiates the three-mile walk was contested in 1876 and won by T. R. Noble of Princeton, in the slow time of 28 minutes 2 r z seconds. It was never contested again. The two-mile walk was contested in 1877, 1878, and 1879, and then dropped. The mile walk remained on the Mott Haven pro gramme until after the games of 1898. It was not done in under seven minutes until 1892, when F. A. Borcherling of Princeton won it in 6 min utes 52t. seconds. This record held until broken by W. B. Fetterman, Jr., of Pennsylvania, whose time of 6 minutes 42* seconds, somewhat more than a dozen seconds behind the world's amateur record, stands as the intercollegiate record.