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This month marks the ninth anniversary ot the origin ot the "American crawI," the swimming stroke that has placed American athletes at the top of the world in sprint swimming.
The year 1903
was a memorable one in aquatics at the New York Athletic Club.
C. M. Daniels
had only just begun to attract attention, but the Mercury Foot squad included
Fred Wenck, Charles Ruberl, Otto Wahle, L. de B. Handley, George Van Cleaf,
Ted Kitching, and a few others, who not only could sweep clean the board
ot championship events, but formed a coterie of watermen well versed In
the science of natatlon and deeply engrossed in the study of its principles.
Indeed, the day's
practice was never complete without a general discussion of the problem
of advancing the art of swimming.
One afternoon
in December, while the little group was holdIng Its usual symposium, Otto
Wahle came upon the scene wIth a descrlptlon of the crawl, clipped from
an Australian paper.
Cavill had just
been doing sensational work with it, and little else was talked about among
swlmmers. Unluckily the description was written by some one who did not
know the subject and it was impossible to make head or tail of it.
Suddenly Ruberl, at that time all-around champion, had an inspiration.
"Why, the leg thrash that man talks about," he exclaimed, "would just fit a definition of Gus Sundstrom's swordfish stroke."
Sundstrom was
then, and is still, the club's swimming instructor, and he can travel twenty-five
yards without using his hands almost as fast as can a good swimmer with
the crawl.
He holds his
arms motionless above hIs head and beats up and down with his legs in rapid,
narrow, alternative drives.
He learned the
trick in the South Seas and has styled it the swordfish stroke.
Immediately upon
Ruberl's exclamation everyone saw the similarity to CavIll's supposed kick.
Sundstrom was asked to give an exhibition, and then and there most of the
clubmen attempted to imitate him.
Some succeeded,
and without hesitation took up the task of practicing the new movements;
others were unable to master them, and gave it up.
The former combined
the continuous thrash with the long straight-arm reach of the trudgeon,
and in a couple of months had clipped several seconds from their fifty-
yard performances.
Van Cleaf and
Kitching in particular negotiated the half century around twenty seconds,
better time than had yet been shown.
News of these
achievements spread fast, and the OIympic games of 1904 in St. Louis gave
swimmers of all sections an opportunity to see the Mercury Footers in action,
and by Fall that year schools of crawlers had been formed wherever natation
obtained.
Daniels, however,
was not converted until a year later, when be went abroad to compete in
the championship of England, and saw the stroke used by Australians.
It is worthy of note that, following his second meeting with Cecil Healy, the year after, in 1906, both he and the Sydney champion altered their style in some detail, to conform with the others, so that they now swim practically the same stroke.
Since the advent ot the crawl in 1903 it has been considerably improved, but the original leg drive copied from Sundstrom has suffered small change, and Australians, who at first lifted the leg high out of the water, have now adopted the Sundstrom movement.
Doubtless we owe
to Cavill the idea; but for his success we would never have conceived it.
Still,when all
is told, it was Americans who evolved and perfected the continuous and
narrow leg trash.
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