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Show m cm mil snippmd go on for four mors: years? BE PAN Mel Sheppard last for another BBi four pars' This question seems flje like a foolish one at first glance, and K the natural answer or one who is post- K ed on athletics is "Certainly not long BK bcf"ie the Berlin Olympiad rolls around Jr Sheppard will be a dead one In the iE hall ot athletic memories" Of course BE the chancer are that Peerless Mel will BB have gone Into retirement before Uncle BE Sam starts to collect his 1916 team. BE but It's not a dead ceriatntv by anv BBT means How many people are there Bft who, at the time of Shcrpard's mar- ? vclous running at the 130S London BB games, thought that Mel would be nt 'W the top of the middle distance heap BJLjV four years Icter. not only running as K- fast ns he did against the Britons, but yards and yards fa-ster'' Few Indeed IBJ . James E. Sullivan, In summing-up M thf featureH of the Stockholm gams, B cites the running of Sheppard In the M 400 S00 and 1.500 meter races and in tm the relay ax well as among the most E wonderful performances at the Barnes. oV and why nof Here's what Mel did 9 He first qualified easily In two prcllm- 1 Inary hcatn for the b00 motors final. Ef Then he went out and made the ruu- ? nlng even step of the wiiv n that great race, bre iking both the MO m -ter and half uule records, but mullet- Ins defeat bv joung Meredith by the margin of one foot The verj net dnv Mel turned out and won his heat In tho 1 500 meters, but twenty-four hours later failed In th final because he was not up to the distance Then came the -100 meters Sheppard won his preliminary In the morning cosily The semifinals came the same af tei -noon and Sheppard had the misfortune misfor-tune to draw Meredith, and on top of that got a bad breakaway when the gun went off As a result he was licked lick-ed the best part of a yard In tho wonderful won-derful time of S 7-10 seconds At the finish Sheppard was gaining fast on Meredith Sheppard's final start Bt Stockholm was In the 1,000 .meter relay I 0k ' nt BJp ' tt & " ,-. -'' ' ftlyr B O' , ' r f ' ' " & t ' a 1 mfi ; , Ji , Vfj - ?; v --'... v ; , B Photo by American Presn Association I CAPTAIN DEVORE. THE ARMY'S BEST TOE ARTIST race In which he ran his preliminary 100 meters In H9 4-6 neconds, and In the final ho stepped the distance in 49 1-5 seconds Thun Peerless Mel ran the 800 meters thrco times, the 1,500 meters twice and the 400 meters four lfmcsaHogethcr the most remarkablo middle distance performance at thu Karnes The honor of predicting" that Sheppard Shep-pard would be a factor lp the Stockholm Stock-holm meeting belongs to an English writer A B George wrote fully a year ago a forecast that Peerless Mel would be "to tho fore." a he put It, In the mld- iiuiiajZjgglEjMgMfcj j die distance events In the Swedish stadium sta-dium George based his predictions on the form that Sheppard exhibited when he toqk seriously to training last summer, sum-mer, when ho repeatedlj beat l minute 55 M.'Conds tor the full half mile In championship races on this sldo. The real reason for Sbeppard's last-In;; last-In;; as long as he has this Is Mel s seventh season with the world's champions cham-pions Is the fact that lie- seldom trains hard lie Is the greatest natural runner run-ner In the w6rld today This fact ho has proved time and again, notably in the fall of 1010. when ho went into the Indoor GOO yard championship without a bit of training and lost the decision to Glsslng by less than one foot In 1 minute and 14 seconds flat. Shoppard has In his bod a wonderful store of racing vitality, and this he has not drawn on heavily by long sieges of training Aside from a few championship champion-ship campaigns Sheppard has done most of his racing with very little training depending on one race to condition con-dition him for tho next. It seems altogether too much to ox-pect ox-pect Peerless Mel to last another four years, and yet, considering what a wonderful won-derful pleco of running machinery he Is. it s within the range of possibility after all When the Berlin rneotlng comes oft Sheppard will bo about thirty thir-ty -one years old, but that Is no deterrent deter-rent to fast running. Alfred Shrubb. the great Engllsl) distance runner, did some of his best running at thirty-four, thirty-four, and George Bonhag, who ran faster fast-er last winter than ever before in his career, has passed the thirtieth milestone mile-stone Sheppard himself has expressed an Inclination to quit athletics before long, but It 1b very unlikely that Pcer-lcss Pcer-lcss Mel will hang up his shoes as long an. he can tear off middle distance performances per-formances tho way he did at Stockholm Stock-holm last month. |