Talk:William Cummings (athlete)

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dubious and doubtful[edit]

there are a number of statements in this article that do not bear scrutiny.

1. the claim that professional runners were called ``bagtagger's" seems to be incorrect. bagtagger itself is not a word, a Google search for it brings up suggestions: ``Did you mean: bagtaggar, bagtags, booktagger" bagtaggar is the avatar of a profesisonal illustrator otherwise known as Stanley von Medvey from Chicago, while a Bag Tagger is a device for automatically attaching tags to bags, labels on produce bags and luggage labels to suitcases and such. I have been writing about athletics for thirty years and have never heard the term. it does not appear once in David Jamieson's book on the history of professional sprinting. to retain it in this article requires a source.

2. all modern sources give Cummings 1 mile in Glasgow on 21 September 1878, which this article is claiming to be 4:18 1/4, as doubtful. Bell's Life, a contemporary newspaper, gives the time as 4:21 and says he was 20-30 yards on his way when the gun was fired. see, for example, Peter Lovesey's book, British Athletics (1866-1880) page 165, where he gives the best mile in Britain that year, professional or amateur, as Cummings' 4:19 1/2 at Glasgow on 5 October.

3. in 1879 Cummings did come second to Edgar Dickenson of Ipswich in the race for the Champion Belt at Lillie Bridge on 6 December, but he also ran the fastest mile in Britain that year, 4:19 1/2 at Motspur Park, Manchester, on 8 November.

4. attributing the slow death of professional athletics to the dominance of Walter Cummings is highly problematic. Cummings was dominant as a professional, and professional athletics was dying, but connecting the two is a dubious strategy unsupported by sources. professional athletics was dying because the punters got tired of being cheated. there are a number of instances of riots at running grounds when the crowd felt cheated by meet promoters, and this culminated with the fire at Lillie Bridge in September 1887. after that professional athletics died out in the south of England and the headquarters shifted to Sheffield, and then to Edinburgh, where the Powderhall Sprint became effectively the professional championship. it is neither accurate nor fair to attribute any of that to William Cummings, unless you have a source, of course.Cottonshirt τ 02:27, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]