In the same autumn, C. G. Wood, an English quarter-mile champion, C. W. Clarke; a distance runner, and T. Ray, the English pole-vaulting champion, visited us. Ray was the only one to succeed. He won the national championship, and in another competition made a new American record of it feet 42 inches. Ray's performances were the first exhibitions in this country of the English style of climbing the pole, and they were viewed, naturally, with great curiosity and interest. In 1888 a squad of American athletes from the Manhattan and New York clubs visited England. Carter, C. W. Clarke, and Conneff, all of whom were newly transplanted Americans, were among them. Of the rest, Jordan, the jumper, Westing, the sprinter, and Gray, the shot-putter, all distin guished themselves by winning at the champion ships. In the autumn of the same year another lot of Irishmen came over, among whom was J. S. Mitchell, who was presently to be the American weight-throwing champion. This team was badly managed, took sides in several unseemly squabbles, and finally went to pieces. The following year several English athletes came across the water, most of them to remain. E. L. Stones of the Ulverstone Cricket and Football Club won the Canadian and American pole-vaulting champion ships and returned to England. In the summer of 1891 a large party of Manhattan Athletic Club men went to England and Paris. Malcolm Ford tied for the English broad-jump championship, C. A. J. Queckenberner established new English records in the hammer and fifty-six-pound weight, and Luther Cary and Remington won a number of victories in the sprints. At Paris that summer the Manhattan athletes won every first except that in the broad jump, which was captured by Victor Mapes of Columbia.
The first team of college track athletes to be sent to England was the Yale team of 1894. This team met the Oxford team on the Queen's Club grounds, in London. Oxford won by a score of 52 to 3i. L. P. Sheldon of Yale tied for the high and won the broad jump ; Hickock of Yale won both the shot and hammer. The other five events went to the Englishmen. This was the first real " international " match between representative teams of England and America. The next international match was the meet be tween London Athletic Club and New York Ath letic Club teams, at Manhattan Field, September 21, 1895. Each club was permitted to elect new members especially for this match. Many of the best college athletes of both England and Amer ica were thus drawn in, and, in fact, the teams represented pretty adequately the track athletic strength of the two countries at that time. As everybody remembers, the games were won by the Americans with what was the most extraor dinary collection of performances that had ever been witnessed on any field or track. World's records in the half mile, the two-twenty, the high hurdles, and the high jump were broken, and the world's record in the hundred was equalled. It was no wonder that the Englishmen, good and plucky men as they were, were beaten. The American team won every event, and had the firsts all been disregarded, the Americans would still have won by a score of 6 to 5. The sum
mary of that meet was as follows : one-hundred yard dash, won by B. J. Wefers, 91 seconds; two-hundred-twenty-yard dash, won by B. J.
Wefers, 2I-2- seconds ; quarter-mile run, won by T. E. Burke, 49 seconds flat ; half-mile run, won by C. H. Kilpatrick, I minute 53} seconds ; one mile run, won by T. P. Conneff, 4 minutes 185 seconds ; three-mile run, won by T. P. Conneff, 15 minutes 365 seconds ; high hurdles, won by S. Chase, 155 seconds (this was faster than the world's record at that time, but it could not be accepted as a record because Chase knocked over one of the hurdles); broad jump, won by E. B. Bloss, 22 feet 6 inches ; high jump, won by M. F. Sweeney, 6 feet 51 inches ; shot-put, won by G. R. Gray, 43 feet 5 inches ; hammer-throw, won by J. S. Mitchell, 137 feet 52 inches.
A fortnight after these meets Yale and Cam bridge held dual games at New Haven. A num ber of the athletes on either side had contested against each other at New York. Yale won by a score of 8 to 3, and she also won 71 seconds as against the 3-1- seconds of the Cantabrigians. The Englishmen won the quarter-mile, half-mile, and mile races, and proved, what has many times been demonstrated, that leaving out exceptional individuals, Englishmen are superior to Ameri cans in the distance runs.
The first of the revived Olympian Games were held at Athens in 1896. A party of American athletes went over to try their fortunes, and they won almost every event in which they entered.
T. E. Burke won the one hundred meters and four hundred meters, corresponding very nearly to our one-hundred-yard dash and quarter-mile run. F. E. Lane of Princeton was second in the one hundred meters, and H. B. Jamison of Princeton in the four-hundred-meter hurdle race ; Ellery Clark won the high jump, with Garrett of Princeton and J. B. Connolly of the Suffolk Athletic Club tied for second place. Clark also won the broad jump, with Garrett second and Connolly third. W. W. Hoyt of Harvard won the pole-vault, Connolly the running hop step and jump, and Garrett the discus-throw and shot-put. There were even rifle and revolver shooting contests, and these were won by two American brothers, sons of General Paine, the yachtsman.
A number of individual American athletes competed in English games at this time under various auspices. John Corbin, who won the Mott Haven half mile for Harvard in 1893, entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1894, and engaged in varsity college sports with some suc cess. Another Harvard man, J. L. Bremer, inter collegiate champion and holder of the world's record in the low hurdles, also entered Balliol in 1896, and competed in college sports. The low hurdles were almost unknown in England, how ever, and in other events Bremer was not able to attain to his hurdling form. Richard Sheldon won second and third places in the shot and ham mer respectively at the English championships, in 1897, and a year later George Orton of Penn sylvania won the two-mile English steeplechase championship handily.