Apparently the four universities chose to heed the Gazette's sage advice, for on September 26, 1901, in the Berkeley Oval in New York, the Harvard-Yale forces evened the score with their British rivals, winning 6 to 3 before a crowd estimated at 7,000.

Under a banner headline, "America Conquers," the Herald shouted, "The meeting will probably go down in athletic annals as the best ever seen on this side of the water."

Giving its description of the excitement and local color, the Herald added, "The members of the visiting team were...really distinguished from the home candidates, if for nothing more than a cleanly aspect, in marked contrast to the American athletes, who as a class, have yet to learn of the launderers art."

Workman's Victories

As for the meet itself, Workman, who now went under the moniker of the Reverend W. H. Workman, added two more victories to his collection, setting a record of 1:55.6 in the half-mile and winning the American-sized distance race, the two-mile. J. S. Spraker of Yale also scored a double win, taking the high jump at a record 6 feet, 1 1/2 inches, and the broad jump. Boal again won the hammer, while O-C won the mile, and H-Y the 100, 440, and hurdles.

When N. H. Margrave won the century in the slow time of 10.4, the alarmed judges, knowing that all the runners were capable of 10 seconds flat, hastened to measure the course. They found to their great embarrassment that it proved 105 yards long.

Before 10,000 spectators and the Band of the Grenadier Guards in London on July 23, 1904, H-Y moved one-up in the series, winning 6-3. The visitors had been thrown into a mild panic when only two days before the meet, Harvard's Murphy, favored to win the high jump, suddenly and unexplainedly left for home. Yale's G. F. Vietor, however, allayed their fears by winning the event.

T. F. Shevlin (Y) broke the hammer record with a heave of 152 feet, 8 inches, and H. W. Gregson set another when he won the mile in 4:21.2. W. A. Schick became the first of eight Crimson runners to share the existing Harvard 100-yard dash mark, when he won in 9.8.

The 1911 meet, also at London, proved more exciting, as it went down to the last event before the O-C squad eked out a 5-4 victory. J. P. Baker of Cambridge sprinted to a five-yard victory in the mile and was promptly carried off the field on the shoulders of his delighted teammates to the strains of "God Save the King."

Hindsight placed the onus of defeat on the poor showing of the American distance men, as E. C. Taylor (O) won the two-mile in the record time of 9:29:2. G. A. Chisholm set the only record as he won the hurdles in 15.4.

American Defeats H-Y

Actually, it took an American to beat the Americans. G. E. Putnam, a giant displaced Kansan, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, won the hammer for the only British win in this event, which was dropped after the following meet.

With the world situation darkening, the rivalry suffered a ten-year interruption, but was resumed in 1921, when the two teams met in Harvard Stadium for the first time.

The British forces were "loaded." They included Oxford's captain, Bevis T. D. Rudd, who had won the 400 meters in the Olympics at Antwerp in 1920. Their half-miler, Mountain, was the British 880 champion, while H. B. Stallard had finished only one yard behind the Olympic champion in the mile competition of the British Championships.

In addition, they had a brute of a man, M. C. Nokes, who was heavily-favored to win the hammer. However, their best hurdler, George Trowbridge, a Rhodes Scholar from Princeton, was felled by an acute attack of appendicitis.