The play that won

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“This is Bannet’s race if he can get it,” he said. “But if Bannet can’t win it, you must, Atherton. Hart, here, will start in and make the pace for you two, and at the end of the third lap you must draw up to the front. Save yourself for the two miles if you can, Atherton; but if you have to win this, do it. We can’t take any chances. And you see if you can’t take third place, Hart.”

The nine runners did some pretty maneuvering for the pole. When they went down the back stretch on the first lap, Bobby was making pace and Carl and Bannet were running fourth and fifth. That was the order for two laps. Then a Maynard chap named Green sprinted and took the lead. Bannet pushed up to third place.

Bobby held on for a while, then dropped back. He had just about used himself up. Beckner, the Maynard “crack,” was running strongly in sixth place, and Carl was watching him closely at every turn.

When the last lap began only five men were left in the running—Green, Bannet, Fuller of Chamberlain, Carl and Beckner.

That was a pretty race; but it did not come out right for us. When the home stretch began, Fuller passed Bannet and Beckner got away from Carl. Then it was Fuller, Bannet and Beckner all the way to within twenty feet of the tape, with a couple of thousand spectators yelling like mad, and crimson and blue and orange flags waving.

Carl was trying hard to come forward, but he had waited too long and was out of it; just as much out of it as Bobby, who was jogging doggedly along half a lap behind. Twenty feet from the finish Fuller spurted again and left two yards between him and the two others, who were fighting hard for second place.

“Come on, Dick!” we shrieked. “Come on! Come on!”

But Bannet could not do any more, and Beckner drew slowly away from him in the last half dozen strides. Bannet was used up when we caught him. And Fuller, too, was pretty tired. Only Beckner seemed fresh, and we knew then that he could have had first place if he had wanted it, and that he was saving himself for the two miles.

Things did not look so bright for us after that race. And after the next one, the finals in the one-hundred-and-twenty-yard hurdles, they looked worse; for all I could do was to get second by a hair’s breadth; Maynard took first by several yards and Chamberlain third.

I was pretty well cut up over that, but there was still the two-hundred-and-twenty, and I vowed that I would do better in that. There was need of improvement, for we had thirteen points to Maynard’s fourteen, with Chamberlain not far behind with nine. Things were not happening at all as we had figured them.