Legs

Human potentiality is a variable which constantly approaches a limit it can never reach. Nothing is so likely as the impossible, for which reason people do well to give more credence to their prophets than to their logicians. What can be done and what cannot be done seems, after the expeditions of many years, to be fairly determined; but no sooner is it so than someone is born who borrows a caravel from his Queen and pays her back with a continent, throws an army over the Alps, or outstrips Time with the fleetness of his heels.

Mile. Last week, on the indoor track of Madison Square Garden, Manhattan, Paavo Nurmi of Finland made his first appearance in the U. S. His first event was a mile race. Nurmi, a thin, blond man, wore a jersey of robin's egg blue, trunks of black. In his right hand, he carried the little watch by which he timed his stride. He disdained, at the start, the conventional crouch. Ray (Illinois A. C.) and Hahn (Boston A. A.) both got away from the pistol before him. Through the first lap, while his competitors jostled for position, Nurmi kept in the rear; when the others had settled into a file, he jogged into the lead. Higgins, onetime Columbia University star, passed him at the 600-yard post; Nurmi paid no attention. He ran very erect, pulled his legs up in front of him like levers operated by a machine, as efficient as an airplane motor. Ray was now running third; three and a half laps from the finish, he jumped the field, passed Nurmi, Higgins, opened up a lead of ten yards. The crowd roared. Nurmi plodded on. One lap, two laps. His levers began to pump a little faster. Ray was tired. Suddenly Ray, suddenly Hahn, heard a great roar that was not for them. The robin's-egg shirt had begun to move. Hahn, Ray, saw it go past them, round the turn, into the last lap. Six yards from the tape, Nurmi looked over his shoulder. He saw Ray, swaying, agonized, fighting to take second place from Hahn. He slowed down, stepped through the tape at a walk. His time-- 4:13 3/5--broke by a second Ray's world record for the indoor* mile.

An hour intervened before the next race. Nurmi, when he had rubbed and showered, strolled among the trainers, timers and rubbers. Blandly, in disregard of their amazed murmurs, he ate a large red apple.

5,000 Metres. The track in Madison Square Garden has eleven laps to the mile (approximately 34 laps to the 5,000 metres). Willie Ritola, brother Finn, old rival of Nurmi, took the lead. At his heels came the flying robin's-egg jersey. Lap after lap the two circled, the field after them. Two laps from home Nurmi sprinted, left a gap of 5 yards, widened it to 10, to 15. Gamely Ritola hung on, his face twisted like a mask of torture, but this time Nurmi did not turn to look. Running like a sprinter who, throughout an afternoon's field sport, has traveled no more than 100 yards, Nurmi broke the tape, broke also, by 9 2/5 seconds, a world's record. (Time, 14:44 3/5).

Significance. Nurmi is 27 --an age at which few runners can race any more, at which none has ever broken records. Nurmi broke two. More than this, he defeated Ray and Ritola -- his most potent rivals. More than this, he caused it to appear as if these men -- both, beyond a doubt, among the world's swiftest runners -- were novices and that he alone ran as a good runner should. Thus did this thin blond Finn alter, for those who watched, the standard by which they had been used to measure the speed of human legs.

* World's outdoor record for mile: 4 min. 10.4 sec., made by Paavo Nurmi in 1923.