Kiwi innovator 'one of nature's gentlemen'
Southern hurdler Gerald Keddell
New Zealanders have been sporting innovators as long as games have been played in the country, and while rugby, netball and, more recently, yachting have led the way, there was a time when athletics was up there as well.
Inspired by reading and absorbing changes in his chosen area of excellence, hurdling, in which New Zealand athletes flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Gerald 'Gerry' Keddell emerged out of Otautau in Western Southland to become one of New Zealand's finest athletes in the pre-First World War era.
Gerald Keddell en route to national title. (Photo, The Sportsman (Auckland), Auckland Libraries Collection)
Making his mark while a boarder at Waitaki Boys' High School, winning the junior and senior athletic championships, he left school and announced himself on the national scene by leaping 23ft 3in to claim the national long jump championship, breaking the long jump record by half an inch short of two feet. While he would win two more national long jump titles, he excelled in hurdling.
While starting out hurdling with the bent-leg method, then standard around the world, Keddell was, later in his career, impressed by some photographs of the best American hurdlers using the straight-leg style introduced by American Alvin Kraenzlein when winning four gold medals at the Paris Olympics in 1900. [Kraenzlein won the 120-yard hurdles, long jump and the discontinued events, the 200-metre hurdles and the 60-metre sprint].
He was immediately fired after mentally digesting the theory with the unquestionable efficiency of the new of the old.
At the time, Keddell was practising as a solicitor at Otautau, Southland, and it was there that he developed in practice what he had already mastered in theory.
He had his brothers photograph him at various stages in flight, and the developed results were then critically compared with the pictures of the American champions.
Gradually, his technique evolved along the lines of the best in the United States under circumstances so intricate and baffling that would early have exhausted the patience of a man with lesser capacity for taking pains.[1]
He tested his style at the 1911 Southland Championships, staged in his hometown of Otautau, registering immediate success. Keddell equalled the world record of 15s for the 120-yard hurdles. Three official timekeepers had him at 15s and a fourth at 15.2s. The track was remeasured and found to be slightly longer than required, and there were claims that some of the hurdles were an inch or two lower than the required 3ft 6in. Before the record could be sent away to be ratified, Keddell demonstrated a sporting approach that said much of his character.
He told officials, clearly from out of town, that a local body engineer had measured the hurdles and were all found to be correct.
However, as I told them on the ground after the race, the course is about 23in downhill, and I would not think of applying for a record on that account.[2]
Another meeting was arranged where the track had no issues, but Keddel was still denied. After this race, two timekeepers stopped their watches at 15 seconds while the third watch refused to start.
But at the 1910-11 national championships, he set an Australasian record of 15.3s for the 120-yard hurdles while taking the 440-yard hurdles in 60.6s.
His 440-yard hurdles win was described as one of the most surprising runs witnessed in New Zealand. [At that time, hurdles were not placed in individual lanes for the 440-yard hurdles].
When the quarter-mile field lined up, Keddell was in the outside position, with the first hurdle on a bend. He had either to run right round his field to get the lead or else drop in behind and rely on his finishing powers. He elected to do the latter, and at one stage was 30 yards behind the leaders. Then he started to move up, and at the last hurdle he caught two men who were leaping together and whizzed between them like a shot out of a gun, going on to snatch victory at the tape. His hurdling in that race was wonderful and the finish was a great sensation.[3]
He contested the Australasian Championships and won in 15.4 sec.
He was breaking the tape as his nearest opponent was rising to the last flight.[4]
Keddell, who was invited to compete at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, declined because he couldn't afford the time away from his law practice. He intended to retire after winning the 1913 New Zealand Championships 120 yards hurdles and long jump, but the visit of an American team tempted him to pit himself against them, especially top hurdler 'Dink' Templeton.
Keddell proved the better of the two, but acknowledged that Templeton had a better style. They raced six times, over the 120 yards hurdles, and Keddell won each time. Templeton was to become a member of the USA gold medal-winning rugby team at the 1920 Olympic Games, where he also finished fourth in the long jump. After their final race in Auckland, The Sportsman said,
Keddell's superiority is very marked after the half-distance in the sprint hurdles is reached. In both heat and final Templeton led to this point. In the heat he faded right away, and in the final, when promising to make a better race of it, he struck the sixth flight…Keddell was an eleventh-hour nomination in the broad jump. Past performances evidently did not count with the handicapper. Templeton and Keddell were placed on scratch. The New Zealand has a record of 23ft 3in, as compared with Templeton's best jump, 22ft ½in. The American accounted for the local brigade with 21ft 6in, but Keddell's third jump produced 22ft 7in, and there was no need to look further for the winner.[5]
Afterwards, Keddell sailed with the New Zealand team to compete in the Australasian championships in Melbourne.
As a result of their racing, Keddell made the necessary technical improvements and put them to use five years later in the final events he contested after the end of the First World War in Europe and Britain.
Despite being 35 and five years retired, Keddell participated in the post-First World War International Games in France and England. On a minimum of training, he still managed to record 16s in the 120-yard hurdles while leaping beyond 22ft in the long jump.
While the New Zealand team was training in England for the Inter-Allied Games in Paris, Keddell advised Harry Wilson on his hurdling technique.
Keddell was beaten by the joint world record-holder Bob Simpson in his heat. Keddell stayed with him for seven hurdles but had to concede.
How Keddell must have yearned for the hands of time to be put back half a dozen years, when at his zenith he was ten yards faster than any man in Australasia and no one could be found to give the champion a race.[6]
Wilson improved so well upon Keddell's advice that he finished third behind Americans Simpson and Fred Kelly. Keddell finished fourth. By the time he retired, Wilson had lowered Keddell's New Zealand record to 15.0 sec.
An interesting aspect of the Inter-Allied Games was the controversy regarding American competitors being sent in from the USA to compete. As a result, Britain sent only a small team to Paris. All other participants chose their athletes from the Services ranks only.
The Southland Times commented:
It would be folly to condemn the Americans as a whole for this action – typical as it is of the modern spirit of Americanism to lose no chance of advertisement. Nevertheless, there will be in America thousands of good sportsmen who will condemn the action taken.[7]
Keddell died in 1923, aged 38, having set up a law practice in Clyde. He moved from Southland to Central Otago in a bid for relief from the illness suffered when wounded on the Somme, but it claimed his life on 12 December 1923.
The Southland Times wrote after Keddell's death,
Away back at the beginning of the present century hurdling was revolutionised by the brilliant [Alvin] Kranzlein, and Keddell, following shortly after him, was one of the most brilliant exponents of this new style of shooting the front leg straight out in clearing the hurdle. Reckoned at one stage of his career to be the fastest hurdler in the world, it was never known how really fast he was, owing to having no one in this part of the world to challenge his supremacy. His best recognised time was 15.3sec, which was beaten a year or so back by H.E. Wilson of Wellington, who it may be mentioned is an exponent of a different style to what Keddell practised viz 'the straight-legged' method which has Earl Thompson of Canada, present world's record holder as its greatest demonstrator, and which unquestionably is a big improvement on any of the old systems.[8]
The Otago Daily Times said of him in its obituary,
During his active athletic career, he put up many fine performances both as an Otago [while studying law] and Southland representative, it being mainly due to his efforts that Southland was placed on the map athletically speaking. He ran and jumped solely for the love of the sport, and, win or lose, he always displayed true sportsmanship.
Unassuming in manner, but possessed of a strong personality, Gerald Keddell was one of Nature's gentlemen.[9]
[1] Otago Daily Times, 24 October 1940
[2] Otago Witness, 15 March 1911
[3] Otago Witness, 18 December 1923
[4] Otago Daily Times, The Magnificent career of Gerald Keddell, 24 October 1940
[5] The Sportsman (Auckland) 16 January 1914
[6] ibid
[7] Southland Times, 1 November 1919
[8] O.M., Southland Times, 15 December 1923
[9] Otago Daily Times, 13 December 1923