Los Angeles herald., 1906-05-20
OLDFIELD SAYS
DANGER LURES
ATHLETES MUST BE RECKLESS
TO EXCESS
In Anticipation Of Witnessing Aool-
dents the American Public Attends
Any Exhibition In Which Hu-
man Blood May BE Spilled


of the automobile, verify possesses an
insight to the attractiveness which
danger in any sport holds for the
American public, and the following
recitation OF what he believes to be
existing conditions comes near proving
that the wizard of the auto knows
whereof he speaks.
I'VE are living in a fast age" said
Oldfield while regaling a party of local
automobiles with some of his ex-
periences several days ago, land the
professional athlete on the altar of a
highly seasoned sport is the one the
public will pay most to see and the one
the greatest amount of stuff will be
printed about
1T is not enough that Americans
bring forth beautiful specimens of me-
chanical skill and inventive genius.
They must be raced around q circular
track, where there is a chance of kill
ing driver or two. 1t is not sufficient
to have wonderfully comfortable and
complete express trains. We must have
an eighteen-hour limited, with a
schedule that admits of no time being
wasted i'm safeguarding the passengers
from collision and disastrous accidents
II am not to be blamed for following
the vocation in which many are kind
enough to say l excel. 1t is the only
enough for an ordinary living, and il
adopted another line of sport as a
pastlme, 1t would of necessity prove
dangerous to be of a profitable nature.
Take any sport that does not SAVIOR
of a casualty list and it is about as ex-
citing as a game of drop the handker-
chief at a church social. L tell YOU
that 1t is in the air, this love for the
danger in sports and pastime. College
foot wn1ld 10
season if the ambulance did not have
to hurry back to the grounds after
making trip to the nearest hospital
with one of the unfortunate, or rather
fortunate. as they are oftentimes
classed, players
Danger Lures
Its the same in the prize fighting
game. What is it that makes a
steeplechasc race feature of horse
racing programs? Nothing more nor
less than the fact that more Jockeys
are Killed and manned in this class of
racing than in the regular races. In
the circuses they no longer figure the
ordinary loop-the-loop as drawing
card. They shifted the old bicycle
stunt to an automobile circling the
dangerous loop But they killed only
Two of the dare devils in one season,
and the demand was for more gore.
This year they are turning a couple
of fiip-faps in the air with the auto
fnoDlle, and as a guarantee that the act
would be success, three women we're
Killed in the preparatory rehearsas.
rake the man who owns an ordi-
nary touring car. He can go faster
with a cheap machine than the roads
or laws will permit, yet he usually sells
the car after his first season, buys
four cylinder affair and starts out to
get the real thrill. He is nots satisfied
10 go thirty miles an hour, which is
Iast, but he must go fifty, when the
roads are fit for only half that speed.
His acquaintanceS will tell you that
he has contracted the automobile
teVer. But it is no such ailment at
all. He has simply become inoculated
with this latter day desire for the dam
gerous and is put in the automobile
ward and treated accordingly. Take
the man who is not able to buy an
automobile; he will scrape up the dol
lar 1t takes to see the automobile
owner race around the track, hoping
1nwardly that he will see something
nappen.' 1t is only those who have ex-
perlenced the sensa ations of flying past
trees and scenery that can tell of the
aliurlng invitation to increase the speed
until the limit is reached
The average automobile owner never
realizes the result of a broken nut or
the crystallizing Of a bit of steel he
simply flies onward the limit of his
speed being the limit of his throttle ana
spark advance. Take the spectator at
an automobile meet. The very man
who knows of my four fatal accidents,
in which spectators who would NOT
heed the warning signs and had crowd
ed close to the track fence, had been
swept into eternity and picked up in
pieces, is the one who crowds closest TO
the trackside on the turns and waves
his hand as 1 go sliding, almost side
wise, into the straight, at seventy miles
an hour
What of a bursted tire or of broken
steering rod, which is scarcely half an
inch in diameter?
Human Nature Changes
81 guess human nature must be a
little different from the brand preVa-
lent in David Harum's days, for nine
tenths of the people who go to an auto
mobile meet to see me drive are there
not for the love of the sport. They
care little which man or car loses or
wins. They simply scent the danger and
realize the chance of an accident which
may mean death and they don't want
to take chance to miss seeing the
something happen
Ihey are unwilling to admit it in
dividually, but that's what attracts
them, and if it does not occur they are
disappointed. I frequently sit in a pub
lie cafe or lobby and overhear a con-
versation between two men. One is
saying, Let's go out to the automobile
races this afternoon and see that fool
Oldfield kill himself There's not much
chance for me to he an egotist, for l
can't help but realize then what it is
that draws them.
"The automobile journals are calling
on the governing body of the sport to
put ban on the racing on circular
tarcks claiming that the danger is too
great and citing the number of drivers
who have been crippled for life or killed
as reason for putting a stop to this
branch of the sport. / would gladly
welcome the deathknell of track racing.
want to stop but cannot. But the
crowds are larger at automobile races
now than ever before and have twice
as many contracts for this season than
| for any previous year. SO long as
drivers are killed and smashed up, Just
so long will automobile racing continue
to draw big crowds"