Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1915 — USED BRAINS TO WIN [ARTICLE]

USED BRAINS TO WIN

HOW ATHLETE ACHIEVED TRIUMPH IN RACEB. Ted Meredith of University of Pennsylvania Had Carefully Thought Out Methods That Brought Him Victory In Contests. There is a belated story of how Ted Meredith of the University of Pennsylvania defeated Bill Bingham of Harvard in the half-mile race in the Intercollegiate championships, which carries with it a lesson valuable to participants in practically all lines of sport, the New York Times remarks. Meredith, it will be remembered, won both the quarter and half-mile races.

The quarter was won in his usual style. Meredith allowed one of his competitors to go out and make the pace, and then came like a streak in the last furlong and won about as he pleased. __ When it came to the half Meredith completely reversed the order of things. He raced at top speed in the first quarter and had all the rest of the field on their toes and practically beaten, doing the quarter in :54. He then slowed down and even allowed a couple of his competitors to pass him, content with the fact that Bingham, whom alone he feared, was plugging along in the rear, hopelessly out of it. With him disposed of, Meredith again sped up in the last furlong, caught and passed the two who had headed him for a short distance, and; won very cleverly without being exhausted.

Meredith’s overwhelming triumph was due to the use of brains coupled with his powers as a racer. Before the race he had taken the trouble to find out the way in which Bingham, the Harvard man, ran his races. He discovered it was his habit to take it easy in the first quarter, running the distance in about a minute flat, and reserving himpelf for the final quarter, which he would do in the neighborhood of fifty seconds. Meredith’s heartbreaking pace in the first quarter completely upset Bingham’s plan for the race, and so bewildered the fleet Harvard runner that the latter had no time to think out and put into operation a new plan. Possibly there is no better example of the superiority of brain over brawn than in the career of George Bothner, the wrestler. His lack of bulk was more than compensated for in the ability to think quickly and almost uncannily to anticipate and thwart she particular “hold” his opponent intended making.

John McGraw’s success as a baseball manager has been entirely due to exceptionally • acute brain power. From the beginning of his career on the diamond he analyzed every play made in *a game in which he participated or witnessed. It was the study that developed the baseball strategy he made his own, and which made him so much of a clairvoyant in foreseeing the “breaks” of a game for or against his team. If Jim Jeffries had been possessed of enough gray matter he might never have loßt the heavyweight championship to Jack Johnson. But the punch in the eye in the second round, which was the turning point in the contest, angered him. After that it was brute force against brute force. Football is so entirely a matter of brains that everybody familiar with sports admits that the best eleven of the physical boxers or wrestlers, for Instance, would have no chance whatever against an eleven such as represents any one of the great universities on the gridiron each fall. The thinking athlete gets more sport out of the game he happens to indulge in, also, than he would if merely an exceptionally good natured athlete or one who is able to absorb the ideas of a trainer and carry them out in purely mechanical fashion. To the young athlete the lesson modern sports teaches us: Attend as well to the cultivation of the mind as to the training; of the body and its muscles if you would enjoy competitive athletics to the full. The first is as necessary as the last to become superexcellent at any sport, to get the greatest enjoyment from sport and to cope with its emergencies.