Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1900-08-04
AMERICAN ATHLETICS IN 1900.
The Great Sport--This Years OIym
pics in Paris.

pics in Paris.
Philadelphia Record: This clos
ing year of the century has
been a remarkable one for sport al
ready, with the yachting season just
opening, the golf season only well I'M
der way and the football players just
beginning to think about the game.
The great sporting event of the year,
the Olympic games, will make up for
what we lose through having no in
~ternational yacht race this season,
and the outlook for all kinds of out
of-doors sports has never been more
pleasing. And il is also a gratifying
indication of the trend of sport in
this country that the purely profess
sional sports, those in which one pays
a h~alf-dollar to see hired athletes
playing, are taking a decided second
place to those sports in which the
player is engaged in the pastime eth
er for exercise or pure love of the
sport.
SO far as the breaking of records is
concerned, it is yet a little early to
talk. The intercollegiate games have
been held, and Pennsylvania has come
off an expected winner, but the base
ball championship is still unsettled,
although Harvard's defeat has prac-
tically put her out of it. And
then there is the football. The golf
season has a midsummer lull at pres
ent while the golfers go to the mount
aims or the seashore to play on the
hotel and summer resort courses, but
the great event of the year in the
royal and ancient game, the amateur
! ah IN ~ ,fn,chfN aA,p,n n1n,,n thn E.St
week in July. Yachting is just start
ing in with the usual Saturday club
races, and there will be the interna-
tionai races on the Great Lakes this
summer to partially compensate for
the failure of the British to try again
for the Americas cup.
As has been said, however, the great
thing in sport this year will be the
Olympic games in Paris. The French
have some odd notions as to what On
stitute "Olympic" games. Those held
in Athens four years ago, where our
own Boston boys carried off the hon
ors of the world, were q revival of the
old Olympic games, and restored that
lost sport of throwing the discus. The
French, however, have added such
sports as automobile races, kite-fly-
ing, balloon ~ascensions and other fea-
lures calculated to make the Mara
thon winners turn i'm their graves.
The United States will be represented
in the Paris games by a team of about
forty men, all but n being college
men. This country has n very good
chance of bringing home a fair share
of the prizes. To be sure, our boys
will not enter in the kite-flying, but
they have a Pennsylvania athlete who
has made a worlds record for the
1~,500-meter race, in practicing for the
games in Paris. Many of our athletes,
too, will join in the British champion
ship games, at which they will meet
the flower of E%ngland's amateur ath-
letes. The voyage across the ocean
undoubtedly does much to put an ath-
lete out of condition, but what was
done at Athens may be done again in
England or in Paris, If the right men
compete.
Taking it all together, this year
should do n great deal toward giving
the nations Of the world an object les
son as to the kind of young men that
are being trained in our American
colleges and universities. Our ath-
letic supremacy in foreign COMPETE
tions means n great deal more than
is represented by the medals our
young men may win. Their sports
manship is clean, and their COMPETE
ton will at least be keen enough to
make the games interesting. We have
much to learn yet, but the outlook for
American sport was never brighter
thai it is TO-DAY.