Imperial Valley press., 1936-07-08

NEW YORK, July 8. U.P) - Ever
since this department has been de-
partment, it has wondered why the
speed of track athletes was not given
in miles per hour, instead of sec
onds, minutes, and. in the case of
marathon runners, hours.
To the average sports page reader
those assorted seconds and split sec
onds which accompany the sum-
mary of a track meet, mean very
little indeed. The information they
offer the layman IS durn meager. It's
impossible for anyone save the close
students of the game to read any
thing that means very much into
those 00:096's and 3:53.4's. When
you read that Jesse owens did the
100-yard dash in 00:095 it does not
conjure up any picture of speed
How much clearer the picture would
be if his efforts were recorded in
miles per hourl
A lead like this, for example,
would be understood even by an Al
ALBANIA housewife who had never
seen a track meet:
PALMER STADIUM, PRINCE
TON, N. j., July 8.U.P-Jesse Owens,
Ohio state daredevil, established a
new worlds land speed record for
human beings today when he drove
his stream-lined body over the meas
ured 00-yard course at an average
speed of 20.177 miles per hour. The
former record of 1888 m.p.h. was
held by Eulace Peacock, Temple un-
iversity flier.
interviewed after his record run
Sir MalcOlm-no, no, not Sir Nal
colin but Owens-Said the course
was perfect, visibility was good, and
he had no engine trouble"
Twenty miles an hour! There's
something for your reader to sink
his teeth into, something he knows
about, and not complicated figure
all stippled with decimal points and
zeroS.
Take the mile run, for example.
| The goal of the men who run this
distance is a mile in four minutes
flat Now to your average sports
page reader that doesn't mean
much. He doesn't follow the game
closely enough to fully understand
| just what four quarters of go means.
How much simpler, how much clear
er, it would be to say that the aim
of world milers is to cover the dis
tance at an average speed of Is miles
| per hour.
OF course, the adoption of the
MP.H. system would rob the
| Charley horse and liniment boys of
| much glamour. This is an age of
tremendous speed, and no one who
has ever driven car at the mig
gardly rate of Is m.ph. would ever
| get lathered with excitement over a
man running that swiftly-or rather
| that slowly. In a car it seems little
more than a crawl. I tried it the
| other day, and as 1 snailed along,
| with the Speedometer needle at Is,
I said to myself that anyone who
couldn't run mile faster than that,
| ought to be taken out and destroyed.
The same is true of a 100-yard
dash at 20 m mp.h. MilkWagons bang
over cobbled streets faster than
that Come to think of it, you can't
name an animal, from rabbit to rae
coon, which can't spot the fastest
human a good head start and pass
him as if he were tied to a post.
And your animal doesn't have to
have a trainer anoint him with the
fine herbs and sweet oils, and he
doesn't require special diets and
superfine handling.
If the MP.H. system is adopted,
I think they should also make a
change in the recording of heights
reached by jumpers and Vaulters.
To say that a man jumped 6 feet
inches isn't nearly so graphic as
to say he cleared a pole which was