This, we think, the pedestrian trainers must well know, as nearly all, and even the mediocre, pedestrians 'run low' when sprinting. The trainers also, we think, believe in the efficacy of their craft and of coaching to completely alter a man's style, for we know on good authority that a Sheffield trainer came up and accosted one of the London heavy-weight sprinters, whom he had seen running at a Northern meeting, and told him if he would learn to run a bit more forward he would beat ten seconds in a month. We have, however, seen so many men get over sprinting distances with all sorts of actions that we feel doubtful about the wisdom of interfering with a man's natural action as far as sprinting is concerned. As a rule, when the sprinter has settled down to his practice and is improving in pace, his style involuntarily begins to approximate in a greater or less degree to the best model.

From the year 1869, when J. G. Wilson, Worcester College, Oxford, scored his first win in the Inter-University Hundred Yards, to the year 1879, when E. C. Trepplin, of B.N.C., Oxford, scored his last win at the same meeting, it is hardly too much to say that the pick of the best amateur sprinters came from Oxford and Cambridge. With Trepplin the race of University sprinters seems unaccountably to have reached an end, for from 1880 to the present there has been no really fine sprinter at the Universities, although there have been plenty of fine performers at longer distances. Of these University sprinters, Wilson, who won in 1869, 1870, and 1871, and secured the championship in 1869 and 1871 (Baker being the winner in 1870), was perhaps the pick of the lot. He was a well-made man of medium height and weight, and ran in irreproachable style with a free stride, his body slightly forward and chest perfectly square. After Wilson's retirement, W. A. Dawson, a Cambridge athlete who won both the Inter-University and Championship Hundred Yards, was decidedly the best runner of the next year. Dawson was a shorter man than Wilson, but ran in much the same style, and though a small man was thick-set with a strong-looking chest and back.

Of the succeeding University runners, Urmson, of Oxford, a tall thin man with a very long stride, who was a capable performer at any distance from 100 yards to a mile (a rare phenomenon), was better at a quarter-mile than a sprint. As with some others, his speed came from his long stride more than from a rapid repetition of the stride; and he was an inferior man at a sprint to Trepplin, the last and perhaps the best of the Oxford sprinting celebrities. Trepplin, who won at the Oxford and Cambridge sports in 1877, 1878, and 1879, had a contretemps at the start of the Hundred Yards race at the championship meeting in 1877, and declined afterwards to compete at the championship meeting. He was over six feet in height and weighed close upon thirteen stone, being big and muscular all over. His style was anything but pretty, for, although he bent his body well forward when sprinting, he had a great deal of ungainly arm action, and until fit found it difficult to run as straight as an arrow on his course, as most sprinters do naturally.

Strangely also, though possessed of great muscular strength, he was quite incapable of staying any distance, and though he could, when trained, run 150 yards in a level 15 seconds, could not rely upon himself to run 220 yards, and was unable to stay home in any longer sprint than 150 yards. Had Trepplin competed in the championship of 1878, however, he could hardly have beaten the Russian, L. Junker, who was the Hundred Yards champion of that year. Junker, like Trepplin, never attempted anything but the shorter sprints, and was only once beaten in his brief and brilliant career upon the running-path during the season of 1877 and 1878, when in July 1877, in a level Hundred Yards race at Birmingham, he ran third to J. Shearman and H. Macdougall, both of whom, though sprinters of the first class, were lucky enough on that occasion to meet Junker on one of his off days. Junker was 5 ft. 9 in. or 5 ft. 10 in. in height, and had a very stiff action, running almost on the flat of his foot; but though ungainly he was of great strength in the legs and back, and to these qualities his speed was doubtless due. The story of his introduction to the running-path in England is rather a quaint one.

On one occasion he appears to have been 'chaffed' by some business acquaintances in the City as to his clumsiness and slowness. Upon this he remarked that he was a good runner - a remark which was followed by a roar of laughter. The Russian thereupon waxed warm and volunteered to run one of the mockers for a bottle of champagne. The match was made and came off at Stamford Bridge, when Junker beat his opponent, who was a fair athlete, by the 'length of the street.' The result was that he joined the L.A.C. After winning a few handicaps he soon found himself at scratch, and able to win from that position; and, as was noticed above, was only once beaten. Unfortunately he did not meet Trepplin during his year of supremacy upon the path, but Bob Rogers, the ground-man of the L.A.C, who trained both athletes at different times, was strongly of opinion that in a match between them there would have only been one in it, and that one Junker. Indeed, the opinion of Rogers was that Junker would have found a more dangerous opponent in C. L. Lockton, who was undoubtedly the best sprinter of 1879. Lockton had a very long career upon the path, having been something of an 'infant phenomenon.' When a schoolboy of fifteen he was quite able to hold his own amongst good company, and was only sixteen when he won the Long Jump championship in 1873. He soon seemed to deteriorate from overwork, but in 1875 again he cleared over twenty-two feet in his school sports at Merchant Taylors', and was then almost the best sprinter and hurdler in England. Some unlucky accidents kept him from the path, and he was not really seen at his best until 1879, when, at one of the rival championship meetings, he won the Hundred Yards, Hurdles and Long Jump in the same day.