Here's something connecting two recent threads. When we were talking
about the origin of the middle and longer metric distances a couple of
weeks ago, it was concluded that the Imperial distances were derived from
the metric ones rather than the other way around. I agree.
For the 3 miles, I remembered that this was a relatively rare distance
in the era before 1910. Here is the quote I was looking for:
"Throughout the nineteenth century, and indeed as late as 1931, the
four miles was a recognized championship event in England; the now popular
three miles was merely a check-point in longer races until it was
introduced as the best linear approximation to the Olympic distance of
5000 metres"
This was written in 1968, hence the "popular 3 miles", "linear" means
"Imperial". Source: "The Kings of Distance", by Peter Lovesey, a one-time
ATFS member and professional writer. I think this is my favourite book
from my collection of about 1000 books on Track and Field. Ever see the
film "Wobble to Death" about the 6-day professional running races of the
1880s? That was an adaptation of one of his crime novels.
Anyway, "Kings of Distance" consists of 5 biographies of distance
runners who dominated the world in their time. Working backwards in time:
Emil Zatopek, Paavo Nurmi, Alfred Shrubb (around 1905), Walter George
(around 1880) and the fifth one, who came from the US.
Since the recent discussion of the greatest US distance runners seems to
go no further back than about 1960, I would like to propose this one as a
candidate. Who knows who he was? Of course, if you have the book, it's
easy, but ....
The great runners were always about equally great, relative to the era
in which they ran.
David Dallman
