Harvard's second place finish in last Saturday's IC4A Indoor Championships should convince even the most stubborn skeptics that the Crimson track team has become a power, able to hold its own against the country's finest talent.

Those who have followed Bill McCurdy's teams for the past few years know that Harvard is always the team to beat among the Ivies, they have come to expect the regular emergance of a Jim Baker or a Doug Hardin. But the news that Harvard has qualified more than a dozen athletes to compete in the NCAA Championships this weekend may amaze even the most optimistic fans.

The fact is that Harvard track, on the verge of winning national recognition, is quickly joining crew and squash as a Harvard prestige sport. For McCurdy and his team, it's an unfamiliar position. Though few realize, the Crimson was once the Goliath of American track--back in the days that history books call the Golden Age of Harvard track.

In 1876 the formation of the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (IC4A) gave collegiate track the biggest boost it would ever get--it held its first meet that year at Saratoga, New York, offering a huge silver cup as a trophy to the team winning the most IC4A titles between then and 1890.

At first, Harvard wasn't too enthusiastic. Harvard track had been formally organized since 1874, when the Harvard Athletic Association was created. But in 1876 there was little interest in track, and Harvard's few entrants in the first IC4A meet did miserably. Princeton won.

Four years later the Golden Age began--and contiued for more than a decade. In the 1880 Intercollegiates were moved to Mott Haven, New York. Harvard--still a team without a decade. In the 1880's Intercollegiates were moved to Mott Haven, New seconds, and three thirds.

The Crimson ended up winning the meet for six straight years, and 10 times in all in the next 12. Harvard's winning streak was broken only in 1887 and 1889--distastefully, by Yale. In the '89--13 years after the first IC4A meet--Harvard was given permanent possession of the silver trophy cup--recognizing the Crimson as the country's first intercollegiate track power.

Harvard's sudden and complete domination of intercollegiate track was traced to two factors: the completion of a five-lap cinder track on Harvard's Jarvis Field and Evert J. Wendell '28's appearance at Harvard. Wendell's enthusiasm and organizational knack put Harvard track on its feet, and his talent gave the Crimson its first victory in the Intercollegiates. In the 1880 meet, Wendell himself won three of the six first places--in the 100, which he ran in 10 seconds flat long before the advent of the crouching start, the 220, and the 440.

(Two of the remaining three first places were taken by Walter Soren '83 and the other by Arthur C. Denniston '83. Denniston was the Crimson's entry in the high jump, Soren in the standing high jump. Both won their events with identical 5'1 1/4" leaps. Harvard's performance in some of the other events was less impressive. The Crimson's entrants in the baseball throw, the two-mile bicycle, and the tug-of-war, for example, didn't even place, to their understandable disappointment.)

Wendell's ablest successors in the Golden '80's were George B. Morrison '83, two-year winner of the Intercollegiate mile, Charles H. Kip '83, the outstanding shot putter and hammer thrower of his day, and middistance runners William H. Goodwin '84 and Wendell Baker '86.

Goodwin and Baker were standouts. For three consecutive years, beginning in 1882, Goodwin won both the quarter mile and half mile in the Intercollegiates. Baker, in his junior year, set a world record in the straightaway quarter-mile of 47 3/4 seconds which stood until 1900. He ran the last 50 yards of his record-setting race barefoot, after losing his shoe.

But in the early 1890's, Harvard's domination of college track began to wane. The Golden Age began to tarnish after the Crimson's 11th Intercollegiate title in 1892--its last for a long time. For the next four years, Harvard struggled to stay in contention. Then, in 1896--its last pressive last gasp effort that would be followed by a sustained slump in the track department--Harvard's tiny contingent to the first of the modern Olympic Games in Athens picked up five gold medals.

Thomas E. Burke Sp. '01 won the 100-meter dash and the 400-meter run; Ellery H. Clark '96 took firsts in the broad jump and high jump; freshman James B. Connolly '99 won the hop, step, and jump.

With the turn of the century, the Golden Age breathed its last, and Harvard track slipped into obscurity. There have been the individual greats along the way since--athletes like Edward O. Gourdin '21, whose 25'3" broad jump in 1921 set a wrold record. But the days of Harvard-the-team-power are long gone--or were until this year. Who's to say but that the next few years may prove to be the "Renaissance" of Harvard track.