Friday marks 100 years of track and field at The Armory. It was Jan. 10, 1914, at an event called the Xavier Games, where the sport was first welcomed into what was then the Armory of the 22nd Regiment. And even on Day One of the building’s long history of indoor racing there was a superstar in the midst. Abel Kiviat, from Staten Island, won the featured half mile and broke two minutes to generate the first headline for track at the armory. Kiviat won a silver medal at the 1912 Olympics and lived to the ripe old age of 99. The New York Times reported the next day: “The time, 1 minute 59 3-5 seconds, was agreed upon by good judges of foot running to have been quite the fastest ever witnessed in this territory.” A hundred years ago, the landscape of Washington Heights was far different. It was largely an Irish neighborhood then. Less than two years earlier, across 168th street where New York-Presbyterian Hospital now stands, the New York Highlanders played their final games at Hilltop Park. By 1914, the Highlanders were known as the Yankees
Read more: ArmoryTrack.com – News – 100 Years of History at The Armory http://www.runnerspace.com/gprofile.php?mgroup_id=45586&do=news&news_id=201763#ixzz2pug6qOEc
