ATHLETIC SPORTS.
The maintaining and enforcing of clear-cut amateur conditions surrounding the entries and contests of the various athletic clubs, and the elimination of professionals surreptitiously get ting into the ranks, necessitated a unification of clubs and setting up of jurisdiction centred in some body. In England the Amateur Athletic Association (A. A. A.) was founded in 1880 at Oxford, confederating the legitimate clubs. After the New York Athletic Club for three years had managed the amateur championship meeting they had established and successfully carried on, the New York Athletic Club de termined in 1879 to give up this management. The club had found the games profitable but the calls for the officers' time was too great in appeals as to decisions on athletic law, informa tion as to the dates of the games, programs, entries, etc. So the New York Athletic Club decided to hand over the conduct of the cham pionship games to a regularly organized asso ciation of athletic clubs. Such an association was formed under the title °National Associa tion of Amateur Athletes of America.° But
abuses crept in and the good name of the amateur sports was endangered. This led to the determination to form a national amateur union of clubs under the title °Amateur Athletic Union of the United States,° which was organized in 1888. Relia bility of the records is the outcome. As George P. Meade well expresses present condi tions: The rules of the records are °timed by at least three skilled timers, distances are accurately surveyed and are remeasured in case a claim for a record is to be made; strict rules are observed to prevent mistake or fraud at the start and finish, and unusual circum stances, such as favoring winds, are noted by judges and referee. Finally the performance is investigated by a committee of the national athletic board of the country in which the race was run, and every circumstance that might affect the validity of the record is discussed before the record is sanctioned. (These pre cautions apply only to amateur athletics) 7D