SPORT ANCIENT AND MODERN 



is the finest performance at the regatta, never 

 used professional help. In 1906 the stewards 

 appointed as official time-keepers Mr. H. Elling- 



ton, London R.C., and Mr. Theodore A. Cook, 

 O.U.B.C. The records for the various races, 

 corrected up to II July, 1907, are as follows : 



ATHLETICS 



Sports have been held in various towns and 

 villages for very many years ; but some of the 

 older meetings have ceased to exist. Some thirty 

 years ago, a famous fixture was held annually at 

 Olney. The races were run on a rather rough 

 up and down hill grass course, which militated 

 against fast times ; but the results were seldom 

 lacking in interest. It was at the Olney sports 

 in the early seventies that James Gibb, after- 

 wards four mile champion of England, made his 

 first appearance as a lad of sixteen. He was 

 handicapped liberally on account of his youth, 

 and easily won the mile. In the following year 

 he was placed at scratch, and again won, a per- 



formance which he repeated for two years in suc- 

 cession. The Bucks Constabulary meeting 

 is a highly popular one, its open events being 

 always well supported by athletes of good class. 

 Other good meetings, which have been long 

 established, are those at Aylesbury, Leighton 

 Buzzard, High Wycombe, Newport Pagnel 

 (whence came another famous ex-champion, C. 

 Pearce), Stony Stratford, Chesham, Buckingham, 

 and Amersham. The oldest of all the paper- 

 chasing clubs, the Thames Hare and Hounds, 

 which has been established nearly forty years, chose 

 a route across country, from High Wycombe to 

 Princes Risborough, for one of their outlying runs. 



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