Vol. 3 No. 68 Eulace Peacock, Kenyan Runners and Darwin, and a request for old Track and Field and RW Journals

One of our readers,  Rick Lower is looking for collections of Track and Field News and Runner's World magazines.  He is more interested in complete years rather than individual magazines.  He can be contacted at      lower6echo@comcast.net     Remember,  your children will probably put those issues in the trash when they find them in your attic someday. 

Two articles were brought to our attention this week. The first is from a  National Public Radio (NPR) piece  by Gregory Warner about the David Epstein book  The Sports Gene on genetic traits of Kenyan athletes, particularly the Kalenjin tribe.    The link is:http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/how-one-kenyan-tribe-produces-the-worlds-best-runners


The second article is "Faster Than the Fastest" by Michael McKnight from Sports Illustrated and talks about the great Temple University  sprinter/jumper of the 1930's,  Eulace Peacock.   On a number of occasions Peacock defeated Jesse Owens in the 100 and the long jump in head to head meetings.  However , Peacock came up injured at the time of the 1936 Olympic trials and failed to make the team, opening the door of history to Owens who more than adequately carried the pressure of his country and the civilized world at the Berlin Olympics.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/longform/peacock/

This is our 265th  posting on this blog.  If we printed out everything it would be over 1,000 pages long, so you should have enough material to get through those long winter evenings this year.  To date over 45,000 hits have been made from over 40 countries.

The all time most read posting is
Roy Mason and Debbie Heald Appear on the Pages of Runner's World              984 hits
The Springbank International Road Races                                                            471
1960 Rome: Day 3                                                                                                 368
Dave Sime Today                                                                                                   233

Countries where most of our hits come from are:
                                                                                USA                                   27,171
                                                                                Russia                                  1,737
                                                                                Germany                              1,620
                                                                                Canada                                 1,572
                                                                                France                                  1,374
                                                                                United Kingdom                  1,295
                                                                                China                                      518
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Thanks for being part of our hobby.    Roy Mason and George Brose


From Tom Coyne
Dear George:

I first heard the name Eulace Peacock back in 1951 from Al Renick, a really fine hurdler and teammate on our track team at Western Michigan College.

Al was from St. Louis and he always claimed that, as good as Owens was, Peacock was better.

Nice to see him being remembered.

Take care,

Tom