HURDLING AND HURDLERS The flight over the hurdles is one of the pret tiest pictures ever framed by the turf and trees of an athletic field. The swift rush and rise — arms outlined like wings — of the high hurdles ; the rhythm of the long, low run and " clip " as the athlete snaps over the lower barrier with scarcely a quaver in the music of his stride — few things are more alive and beautiful with the thrill of contest and of the out-of-doors.
The modern style of hurdling has, if anything, rather added to the grace of this lively sport. In crossing both the high and the low hurdle, the runner nowadays tends more and more simply to stride across, to remain in the air as short a time as possible, and to make the flight over the barrier as little as possible a break in stride. The old style of going over the hurdle was to bend the leading leg so that from the knee down it was almost parallel with the hurdle. As a result of this gath ering up of the leading leg there was a perceptible moment during which the runner " sailed," so to speak, through the air before touching ground with the toe of the leading leg again and resuming his stride. When a green runner first starts learning to hurdle, this fault is always accentuated, and a lot of valuable time is lost in taking the hurdles too high. Nowadays the leading leg is bent scarcely at all — a matter which depends, of course, on the hurdler's length of limb and the amount of " spring " he has in him—and the runner almost steps over the hurdle just as, in a lesser way, he would step over a stone that lay in his path. Men like Kranzlein, for instance, of great length of limb and extraordinary natural spring, seem scarcely to notice the obstacles at all. The slight hesitation and gathering of one's self together for the spring, which any man, who has never tried the hurdles, must feel when first negotiating the three-feet-six fences, disappears completely, and the ten leaps represent merely so many exaggerated running strides.
In the low " two-twenty " hurdles sprinting ability is decidedly an essential; in the high hurdles skill in taking the obstacles is more im portant. The high hurdles are placed only ten yards apart instead of twenty yards, as in the case of the low hurdles, and it is obviously a very difficult thing to work up any particular sprinting speed in the three strides which are made between the fences. For this reason the high hurdler must learn to reach the first hurdle at top speed —to acquire an initial momentum, so to speak, which he can maintain through the other one hundred five yards. There are only fifteen yards in which to work up this head of steam, and it is not an easy thing to do; but if the runner is going slowly when he reaches the first of the high hurdles he will be pretty sure to be slow all the way through. In the low hurdles the mere taking of the obstacle does not require the same sort of perfected skill to negotiate the high fences, but the mere fact that the race is pretty much a sprint makes the acquirement of perfect ease and rhythm in hurdling an essential. The spacing of the strides and the choice of take-off foot are matters of technique, which vary more or less with individual athletes, but are of equal impor tance in both events.
It was not until the early nineties that Ameri can amateurs attained anything like good average form in the hurdles. The average time in which each of the hurdle events was run during the eighties was anywhere from i to 22 seconds slower than is now considered first-class hurdling.
A. A. Jordan of the Manhattan Athletic Club was one of the first of our athletes really to per form at the hurdles with distinction. Jordan won the high-hurdle national championship four years in succession, in 1885, 1886, 1887, and '888 the latter year in 165 seconds. Ducharme of the Detroit Athletic Club, O. F. Copeland of the Manhattan, F. C. Puffer of the New Jersey Ath letic Club, all sixteen-flat men, kept up the pace for the next few years until, in 1894, with Stephen Chase of Dartmouth, the college athletes began to compete on even terms with the club hurdlers. The same men did the winning in the low hurdles, and Puffer, who, running with a strong wind and knocking down five hurdles, made a record of 15i- seconds in 1892, captured the low-hurdle championship in that year, in 1893, and in 1894. In 1893 he won in 255 seconds. The high-hur dle record at Mott Haven was carried below 17 seconds for the first time, in 1899, by Herbert Mapes of Columbia, who won in 165 seconds. The record has never been allowed to slip back again. Among those who maintained or bettered it were Williams, Van Ingen, Cady, Perkins, and E. J. Clapp of Yale, Harding of Columbia, Con verse of Harvard, Chase of Dartmouth, E. E. Morgan of Stanford, and the seven-league-footed Kranzlein. In the low hurdles the Mott Haven record was first forced below 26 seconds by J. P. Lee of Harvard, with his 251 seconds, in 189o. Here, too, the record has not gone again above 26 seconds, and Lee's time has been bettered nearly 2 seconds. Fearing, Bremer, and Willis of Harvard, Williams, Perkins, and Clapp of Yale, all have won championships at Mott Haven.
Several of these hurdlers were famous athletes in their time— Bremer held the world's record — but all of them were so decidedly surpassed by the champion, Kranzlein, that that phenomenal jack rabbit stands in a class by himself. Kranzlein won both the high and the low hurdles at Mott Haven in 1898,1899, and I9oo ; he won the national cham pionship in low hurdles in 1897, 1898, and 1899, and in the high hurdles in 1898 and 1899. His record of 152-- seconds, made at Chicago, June 18, 1898, broke all previous world's records for the high hurdles, and the same was true of his record of 231 seconds for the low hurdles made at Mott Haven in 1898. Kranzlein won the English championship in the one-hundred-twenty-yard hurdle in I55 seconds in 1900, and in I55 seconds in 1901. These times, which were made on grass in accordance with the English custom, each sur passed all previous English records, although Fox of Harvard did 155 in the high hurdles at the Harvard-Yale–Oxford-Cambridge games in 1899. No one who ever saw Kranzlein run could fail to be impressed by his superabundant lithe ness and " spring." He was tall and very slim, with slender legs, and not an ounce of super fluous weight on him. His style was ultra-typical of latter-day hurdling form. He apparently took, very little notice of the hurdles — simply stepping over them, so to speak, as they came. There was none of that tenseness and " bearing on " which the spectator feels in watching many runners of a heavier and more powerful build — the man simply romped down the track as easily as a greyhound might romp across a clover field. Spring, and not strength, was most apparent. It seemed simply that he was built that way.