The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-04-04

elghIeen years in the training or atn-s
 letes and the building up of run down
 people, and is a recognized authority
 on all subjects connected with ath-
 letes, physical culture and scientific
 exercise. 'The Trainers Corner will appear in this paper exery Saturday.
 A few years ago pr. Osler was al-1 legged to have said that the man of
 sixty is on the down grade and fac- etiously suggested the use of chloro-
 form for putting such patriarchs out
 of their misery. It has since. deveI- oped that pr. Osler's statements were
 wildly, exaggerated, and that all he
 meant to imply was that most men do
 better work before reaching the three
 score mark than after it, which, de-
 spite many brilliant exceptions. nobody can sdeny-eeNoW we have a new age
 limit, however, set up by the New
 York State Athletic Commission, which has solemnly and oficiaIy registered
 the opinion that forty years is the age
 at which man hits the toboggan Of life. Hereafter no professional boxer who is past the fatal two-score years age limit will be permitted to display his fstic proWness in a, New York ring
 If such poor, zdecrepit and doddering
 Wrecks want to continue their careers as knights of the padded nnitts they will have to go elsewhere than New York to do it. The athletic commis- sion of the Empire State washes it hands of responsibility for anything | that may happen. to such relics of Che
 ring.
 Now, from the viewpoint of a phy- sica1 culturist. there is no reason on earth why a boxer cou1d't be as good at forty. or even at fifty, as at thirty no reason on earth, if boxers would take proper care of themselves. But they don't. I could tell you a, story of one. of the greatest champions of ring history who escaped from the, surveillance of his trainer a few days before an important battle in which the title was involved, and who se-
 cured a gallon jug of whiskey,. put it in a boat and rowed out to sea, where he spent twelve hours boozing and consumed the whole gallon of hard stuff before he was discovered. And
 he was only a sample of what many
 boxers are like-n1en who have to be
 watched as carefully as children or prima donnas to prevent them from getting into mischief.
 Generally speaking, you can divided the pugilistic profession into two punches. One class is ruined by ad-
 ulation-s and money and dissipation.
 pockets, and, to prevent such a disz aster, they spend their money on riotous living. and always have plenty of assistance from friends This sort of boxer believes, with Carnegie, that it is disgrace to die rich, so he
 takes proper precautions against such
 post-mortem shame, and ruins his
 health and stamina in the process. There is another class of boxers, almost unknown twenty years ago but now very prevalent, who go to the opposite extteme of thrift. They are in the game simply and solely for the coin, and they hang on to every cent they get. The brilliant lights of Broadway don't attract those fellows. So far, so good. But in their greed for money they train and fight, fight and train, all the time, never over
 looking a chance to add a few hun dreds or thousands to their bank ac- count. Now. every man should take ] enough exercise every day to keep fit, but tllere is such, thing as overdoing
 it. The strict and steady training
 necessary for the boxer. especially if
 he has to keep down his weight, is
 more than the human machine can stand for any long and continuous
 period. So the avarice of this type of
 boxer ruins his strength and stamina,
 and sends him to the pugilistic dis card. a decade before his time.
 | The present-day boxers of promin-
 ence who are not going to one or the other of these two extremes could. be
 counted on the fingers of 8 one-armed
 man. Wherefore the New York Ath- | letic Commission is right in making forty years the age limit.
 | Tn former times boxers had more
 wisdom or else they had stronger con- stitutions, for in the early days of the game there were almost many good men who were past forty as there were under that age. The present gen. eration has seen a number of boxers
 who were good men at forty. Bob F'itzsiInmons was nearing the forty
 mark when he knocked out Gus Ruh- | lin and Tom Sharkey,s and he was past l forty when he fought Jeffries the second time Although Ruby Robert was whipped, Jeff will tell you that
 the old patriarch wasn't any soft snap Kid Mccoy, who was forty last l October, is an example of what right l living can do for a man. Mccoy
 made fortune while middleweight champion, and accumulated and lost several fortunes in other lines of ac- tivfty He was one of the fastest of | the white lighters, and when he was hitting it up there was absolutely no speed limit. And yet, when he was | near the fatal forty mark, he turned about face, studied the laws of phy- sical culture and normal living, and
 ''can1e back strong enough to whip | a number of fairly good men. The Hoosfer Kids stunt should serve as
 an example to men in all walks of life who have been overworkfng and l burning the candle at both ends, and who find themselves, while still in the prime of life, going back physically and mentally O That boxing doesn't necessarily wear
 a man out is shown by the career of
 Prof. Mike Donovan, long the boxing instructor at the New York Athletic Club. Mike began his ring career in
 1866, after he had served as a soldier | in the Union army. His first battle went nearly a hundred rounds, and
 Mike fought his way up to the middle
 weight championship with bare
 knuck1es, and took part in scores of
 bouts that went from thirty to a hun dred rounds. And yet, when he was we'll past forty, and had been out of
 the ring several years, he was good
 enough to go in and get a draw with
 Jack Dempsey, then middIeweight