The New York herald., 1921-04-17
Mere Handful Of Colleges in
1891; $500 Competi-
tors Now.

Pennsylvania twenty-seventh annual
relay carnival will take place on Frank
lin Field a week from next Friday and
Saturday and it will be the greatest set
Of games ever held in the history OF the
world with the exception of the Olympic
championships.
1t may be interesting at this time to
give a short review of the development
of the relay carnival. Frank B. Ellis
was the man in whom originated the
idea of making relay racing the feature
of meet. In 1894 preliminary meet
was held with Princeton and Pennsyl-
vania running a one mile relay, the
same being won by Pennsylvania. The
next year, with the opening OF Frank
lin Field, the relay carnival as such was
started. 1t is an indication OF what
wonderful progress has been made in
our schools and colleges in track and
field athletics when 1t is stated that
though only a dozen colleges and about
fifteen schools competed, the carnival
was considered the largest and finest
meet of the year.
Harvard University had the honor or
winning the first international cham
pionship relay. the one mile, in that year,
with Pennsylvania, the only other starter
second, but not far away. Bingham,
Hollister and Vincent. three men all or
whom could do so seconds, ran on
this Harvard team, and though track
athletics have developed greatly since
then, they were classy enough to make
any big college team now. for before they
left college Hollister had done 4S 4-5
seconds for the quarter and l minute
54 3-5 seconds for the half, while Bing-
ham and Vincent had beaten SO seconds.
start OF Distance Relays.
The next year saw a big advance.
with the feature a five mile relay cham
pionship, the first in the long series
of distance championship relays that
have done so much to popularize dis
tance running in this country. The
reason the race was at five miles was
because that old fox and greatest Of
track coaches that ever lived, Mike
Murphy was then at Yale, and he fig
ured out that he could win with five
men, though Penn had suggested four.
1t looked as II he was right, for at the
beginning of the last mile his runner,
Buckingham, had a lead of seventy
yards on Orton, now the manager of the
carnival. Orton ran that day probably
the fastest mile ever run on Franklin
Field, for he gradually overhauled the
Yale runner and won out. The time OF
this mile from the time that Bucking-
ham started until Orton finished was
:27 3-5. meaning that the Penn runner
had run seventy yards faster than that
time. This race was 80 sensational that
II at once made the distance relays
popular
Shortly after that a two mile college
relay championship was added and since
that time the one, two and four mile
relay championships have been standard
events on the programme. The special
events were originally put on the pro-
gramme to fill it out, but they soon be-
came so popular that they were regard
ed as one of the features of the meet.
Then the one mile high school and the
one mile preparatory school champion
ship were put on the programme and
they soon attracted the best schools of
the country. BY 1900, that Is, in five
years. the carnival had developed re-
markably and was then considered, as IL
| has been since, as the most important
| track and field meet of the season.
| In 1916 the entries for the carnival
had become so numerous that 1t was
necessary to hold a two days carnival.
| The sprint and the distance medley re-
/ lay championships were added to the pro-
| gramme, with Pennsylvania and Yale
scoring first honors respectively, and