Old Photo mashup - The Games 1912-1962

[Alan H]

About the "lean athletes" thing...

You all might be right. Interestingly, when I was in Scotland, the only people throwing in the heavy events were younger guys who obviously worked at it a lot. Some of the athletes were big guys, but even the heaviest of them were generally trimmer than a lot of the guys you'll see in the B and C classes here in the USA.

In Scotland there IS no "B class" or "C class" for intermediate and beginner throwers. Everybody throws together, there's a huge mental/fitness barrier to participation, and a "HUGE" Games will have 18-20 athletes. Most have more like a dozen. Here in the USA where more "just folks" do the events, a "big" Games will have 100 athletes. "Backyard" Games...meaning someone has all the implements, they invite their buddies over for a BBQ and throwing party..... might number a dozen.

So I'm not sure that it's a time-related thing. In Scotland, the athletes come from a more heavily "selected", and hard-training population. By that I mean that the absolute top athletes in Scotland train at the same level as the top athletes in the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, but there really are no "weekend warriors" out on the Scottish fields.

[Pinkrose]

Some of those action shots from the 1930's are quite stunning from a photographically.

[figheadair]

Love the dancing picture from the Oban Games. Interesting how old the competators are, especially the chap on the left.

[Michael Weatherhead]

I'm loving this photo set for the Athletics end of it but I'm sure you traditional clothing lads and lasses will enjoy it, too. There are lots of pictures of regimental kit and civilian kilt clothing during the period.

http://mashable.com/2016/02/08/highl.../#Dg0iuxMf5kq2

Today's competitors develop their muscles largely by working out, while those in earlier times did so by working. While today's athletes are bigger, more massive than in previous times, I think it's fair to say that lb for lb, the athlets in the old photos (while they appear skinnier than today's) were stronger, due largely to their occupation. While on that other site, I clicked on, with great interest, to the old logging photos. I have several turn- of-the-last-century logging photos, showing my great great uncle (of Scottish descent), on a logging crew, in the Sequoia forest. Not any chubby fellas, among his work crew.

[Michael Weatherhead]

As a young man, I worked for a copper mine. I worked in a plant, where the copper cathodes (thick sheets, some of you may have seen bundles of these of flatbed semi-trailers). The whole processed required a lot of hard physical labor, on our part, as the work crew. We might have come to work there, a little portly, but after while, all the perspiration, and physically demanding work, made us a lean, machine copper making machine. At the annual company picnic, there were several competition games, including a tug-of-war. Our little crew went up against some crews, with some fairly big guys, as anchor, and on their teams. But guess what, we smoked them all. We went undefeated, each year, for the three years, that I worked there. I believe what help us (and we were all sizes, none of us very big, some small ones in the group), was that each one of us, did hard physical labor, 5 days a week. We used and developed our muscles. I know that I for one developed a pretty nice six pack, then. I believe this applied to our forefathers, also, My dad wasn't a big man, but he sure was strong. He worked hard, when he was young.