Once Upon a Time in the Vest

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Vol. 2 No. 23 November 1960

NOVEMBER 1960

This issue reports on the championship cross country meets, more tidbits from the track season and the final US lists.

The US cross country season is dominated by Australia's Al Lawrence
Al Lawrence today
Lawrence setting world indoor 3 miles record

and the University of Houston, the best team money can import. On Nov. 21 in East Lansing, Lawrence takes 40 seconds off the course record, winning in 19:28. Teammate John Macy is second, 16 seconds back. Barrie Almond and Pat Clohessey finish 8th and 11th. At this point it doesn't matter that George Rankin is 50th. He could have finished 84th in the field of 99 and the Cougars would still have won. All of these guys are foreigners. Their average age is 27. Coach John Morriss recruits well.(See Tribute to Johnny Morriss, below) Houston 54, Michigan State 80, Western Michigan 84. Once again all the teams are from the East or Midwest. The schools furthest west are Air Force and Colorado State.

Three days later it is the AAU meet in Lexington, Kentucky. It is a smaller field, but the results are the same. Lawrence runs away from 39 year old Englishman Fred Norris to win by 6 seconds in 31:21. Norris' affiliation is listed as Lake Charles. He is a freshman at McNeese State, but can't represent the school because of Louisiana segregation policies. ( Another interesting note about Fred Norris is that he was 39 years old when he came to McNeese St., already a hardened journeyman runner working in the coal mines of England. He was older than the McNeese coach. One can only imagine what Lake Charles, LA seemed to be to Fred after all those years underground. Did he get used to gumbo and crawfish over fish and chips? We'll never know. Nevertheless he ran some sub 9 minute two miles indoors for them and was in the lead pack late in the Boston marathon before getting thrown off stride by an unleashed dog. He was so thin, some called him the running cadaver. Harold Norpoth would have looked like Arnold Scwharzenegger beside Norris. If you google "Fred Norris,McNeese St." a site for 'Brawn Drain', will appear and an interesting chapter can be seen about old athletes and imposter athletes gaming the NCAA recruiting system. the editor) This time Houston flies the colors of the Houston Track and Field Club. They thump the New York AC for the title 33-42. The University of Chicago TC is a respectable third at 50 points. Morehead College is fourth at 94, but then it gets interesting. Berea College takes fifth with what looks like a PE class. In the field of 61 over 10 K, the local lads place 43-47-52-56-58-59 with times between 38:15 and 43:24. As the saying goes, 80% of success is showing up.

Ted Haydon, U. of Chicago Track Club Coach

Ted Haydon captained the University of Chicago track & field team in 1933 and returned to Chicago to serve as head track & field coach from 1950-85. A member of the U.S. Track & Field Hall of Fame, Haydon formed the University of Chicago Track Club, which became a national force. As a student-athlete at Chicago, he was a national qualifier in the javelin.


The most significant of the collegiate meets is the Big Eight meet in Stillwater, Oklahoma where the hometown Cowboys win their first conference championship and end Kansas' streak of 13 consecutive titles. The finish is one for the ages. Billy Mills of Kansas takes the individual title, but not by much. His 15:03.6 gets him home barely ahead of three Okie Staters, John Haraughty, 15:04, Jack MePhail, 15:05, Harold Smith, 15:06, and teammate Bill Dotson, 15:07. That's five guys within 3.4 seconds over three miles.

Remember the retirements of Ron Morris and Parry O'Brien? Forget it, they will be competing indoors and perhaps outdoors as well. Tell you who will not be back: Lee Calhoun and Bobby Morrow because they have been declared professionals. Morrow has made public his business affiliation with a company that produces among other things the Bobby Morrow Kick Gauge, a device that positions one's starting blocks for maximum leverage. Calhoun's professional status stems from his acceptance of the job of sports director for the the city of Gary, Indiana's parks and playgrounds. As this is enough to keep him from competition, he is free to accept a gift of $3000 as a down payment on a home.

High jumper Joe Faust (see article below) has dropped out of Occidental College “for personal reasons” and has jumped for the last time. How many times have we seen the term “personal reasons” used to gloss over something negative? Not this time. Joe Faust is leaving the school and the sport to enter the priesthood.

Remember the tragic crash that took the lives of so many of those on board the plane that carried the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo football team Oct. 29, 1960? One of those who lost his life is 46.0 400 meter runner Vic Hall.

Last month we reported that Olympic 100 meter champion Armin Hary, not having his price met for three films featuring his own wonderfulness, had devoted his time to writing his memoirs. Well, it appears that the siren call of the silver screen has once again captured his attention. He is now interested in filming The Armin Hary Story with himself playing the title role. Not to be outdone, his Olympic teammate, Carl Kaufmann, is moving forward with his entertainment career as well. He has just recorded his first song, “Und Amor lauft mit” which translates as “Cupid Runs too”. If you know the tune, feel free to hum along as you read further.

Archie San Romani Jr. has transferred from Wichita State to Oregon.
San Romani Jr. 2 nd to Jim Grelle at Mt. San Sac? Relays


Glenn Cunningham, Archie San Romani Sr. and Gene Venzke the 3 US 1500 entrants at 1936 Olympics on the boat to Europe.

Gordon Pirie has retired and moved to New Zealand. Roger Moens, Belgium's 800 WR holder is the subject of conflicting reports. Some say he will retire, but others report an interest in continuing his career in the 1500 where he has a PR of 3:41.4.

The IAAF ruled that 200 meter races around a turn which have aiding wind in the stretch will not be considered for record purposes. As this was not the case when England’s Peter Radford's 20.5 was accepted as the WR, his mark will be referred to as a “record accepted by mistake”. Awkward at best.

From our thinking outside the box department: Harold Abrahams of Great Britain has a suggestion that would revolutionize broad jumping. He proposes a “step off board” one meter in length. The jumper can take off anywhere within this zone and the measurement will be taken from the footprint (made more visible through the use of an adequate material). Jumpers would be “psychologically unbothered” while going down the runway and there would be practically no fouls. The more your hard working reporter thinks about that, the better the idea seems.

With the track world abuzz from the Olympics, this issue is full of ads. For the first time an entire page is devoted to an ad, specifically Champions on Film who offer “1960 Olympic Movies from Rome” ($25), 16mm “loop” movies and sets of “loops” in 8mm ($19.95). Honest to God,.....I am not making this up,......the address is 303½ S. Main Street, USA. No phone number. Think someone got yelled at for that?

The choice of shoes now includes Spot-Bilt (with all-kangaroo uppers), Puma (the imported shoe), Dreske (a fine, new track shoe / dealers wanted) and, of course, Adidas (the proof is in the wearing).



A Tribute to Johnny Morriss from the Lousiana Sports Hall of Fame
Johnny Morriss
Sport: Track and Field
They don't make hurdles – or hurdlers – like they did before World War II.

Johnny with US team in Torino,Italy 1933

Johnny later in life.
Six of the 15 track and field athletes in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame were world class hurdlers, including two of the five members of Bernie Moore's LSU team that won the 1933 National Collegiate Athletic Association championship. But modern day hurdlers such as Rodney Milburn and Willie Davenport should be thankful that they didn't compete in the good old days.

Hitting a hurdle now might cost an athlete a tenth of a second. Fifty or sixty years ago, it could mean a broken leg.

“It was straight upback and did not have anything on it that would give,” Johnny Morriss said of the hurdles he conquered in tying the world record with a time of 14.3 seconds in 1933.

In one exhibition race in Cleveland, Morriss didn't even run in a straight. “We ran on the baseball field,” he recalled. “The high hurdles started at home plate and five hurdles were down the right field line. Then it curved toward centerfield for the last five hurdles. Of course, it was all on grass. I ran 14.6, and it was published as a world record.”

His first taste of international competition was a victory over Lord Burghley of England (the 1928 Olympic 400 meter hurdles champion, and one of the Olympians portrayed in the movie “Chariots of Fire”) in the 1930 Toronto World's Fair. Lord Burghley was elected to Parliament in 1931, but was granted a leave of absence for the 1932 Olympics.

Morriss was a three-year letterman in football, basketball and track at Lafayette High, graduating in 1926. He earned 12 letters at Southwestern Louisiana Institute – four apiece in football and track, two apiece in football and golf.

Abbeville High hired him in 1930 – officially as a teacher and assistant principal, to protect his amateur status. But unofficially, he did plenty of coaching, Marty Broussard, then a student at Abbeville High, recalled Morriss setting up hurdles in the school's hallway on rainy days to practice when he was preparing for a major meet.

The year before he broke the world record, Morriss was the first alternate in the 110 meter high hurdles on the 1932 U.S. Olympic team.

George Saling of Iowa, the NCAA champion, won the gold medal and Percy Beard, who had nipped Morriss by a foot for the third spot on the U.S. team, won the silver medal.

One year later, Morriss won the national AAU championship at Chicago's Soldier Field with a world record clocking of 14.3 seconds in a qualifying heat. Perseverance paid off for Morriss, who had finished fourth or fifth in the previous three national AAU championships. Third place in that race went to Al Moreau of LSU, another member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

The other “old-timer” in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame is Glen “Slats” Hardin, whose specialties were the longer hurdles races.

After the 1933 national AAU meet in Chicago, Morriss toured Europe for two months and won 17 consecutive races in international competition. In the World Student Games in Turin, Italy, Morriss was selected to carry the U.S. flag in the opening parade of nations. He won the high hurdles in that meet. Throughout his career, he wore a red and white SLI shirt, even in European meets.

Morriss, who coached athletes in four sports at Abbeville High, later coached North Carolina to Southern Conference championships four years in a row, directed SLI to three consecutive Gulf States Conference championships and led the University of Arkansas to the Southwest Conference cross country title. Between those stints, he spent three years in the U.S. Navy during World War II and worked with a Chicago athletic supply company for two years.

In 1955, Morriss took over the track and cross country program at the University of Houston. His Cougars won three consecutive national AAU cross country championships.

Morriss coached 30 All-Americans in track and field, and 36 in cross country. His athletes tied or broke eight world records, and nine of them competed in the Olympic Games – three for the United States and six for Canada.

He originated the “Meet of Champions” in Houston and brought indoor track to Houston. Morriss was instrumental in bringing the national championship meet to Houston's Jeppesen Stadium in 1986.

“He's the only man I know,” said one friend, “who can start talking about football, basketball or anything else, and wind up talking about track.”

Morriss, author of The Self-Coached Runner, is the only track coach from Louisiana or Texas to be elected president of both the NCAA Cross Country Coaches' Association and the Outdoor Track Coaches' Association. He is a member of numerous Halls of Fame.

In recent years, Morriss has been battling Alzheimer's disease. A man who had seven holes-in-one as a golfer, his golf game has been limited to practicing putts in the backyard of Houston's Sheltering Arms Day Center. The game that kept him alert was dominoes.

Alzheimer's is a progressive, degenerative disease that claims more than 100,000 lives a year – making it the fourth leading cause of death nationally behind heart disease, cancer and stroke.

His wife, Nona, said the most difficult thing was watching a dynamic person who was always self-reliant become dependent on others for everything. “We still have a lot of good conversations,” she said in the winter of 1991. “We take walks and we have friends who involved us in what they do. But I cry easily now. That's something I never used to do.


The following is an article about Joe Faust from the Culver City HS Alumni News by Rick Weingarten including an exerpt from "Rome 1960".
An Olympian from Culver High : : Joe Faust

From the book: "ROME 1960..The Olympics That Changed The World” by David Maraniss

“The high-jump competition was an all-day affair. It started at 9 that morning with 32 jumpers, and by lunch the field had narrowed to 17 who had cleared 6’-6 ¾” . American Joe Faust, with a sore lower back, was the first one out in the afternoon. “

“It could be said that Joe Faust failed at the Rome Olympics, coming up short after working toward a single moment for 7 years, but his disappointment was not written into the larger drama of U.S. men’s track-and-field team on what came to be known as Black Thursday. Few had heard of Faust before or after 9/1/60, and he was virtually invisible at the competition, withdrawing after the preliminary round in the high jump. He barely dragged his pained body over the bar at 6-4 ¾, then bowed out, finishing in 17th place, which was far worse than he might have done but better than 14 other jumpers from Tunisia to Iceland. That is how most Olympic athletes finish, unknown and unseen, away from the glare of media hype and patriotic hope. Like any of them, Faust would have been delighted to win a gold medal at the Stadio Olimpico, but he understood that in the larger scheme of things it would not have mattered, and the scheme of things is what he was all about.

There had been a touch of fame in the family before his athletic career. His father, Louis (Bob) Faust, was an actor who played a villain in several John Wayne movies, including the 1947 “Angel and the Badman.” Bob assumed the role of bad man in the family, too, leaving his pregnant wife and 7 children. Joe was 5 when his parents separated, and spent much of his childhood with a foster family in Culver City. He was a normal kid except in two respects: he had wondrous spring in his legs and religious curiosity in his heart. By age 10 he was a precocious Catholic, searching for the spiritual essence of life.

His junior high track coach notice Joe’s exuberant bounce and quickly steered him toward the high jump. It was 1953, and together they developed an ambitious long-term plan to get to the 1960 Olympics. One out of a million chance, perhaps. ‘But I believed him,’ Faust said of his coach. ‘And we started working.’ His first jump was 3-foot-7, but by the end of that year he was at five-eight and moving higher by the week. He did the straddle jump, like most jumpers of that era, approaching the bar from a left angle and kicking up and over with his lead arm & leg. ‘I loved seeing the bar as I went over it,’ he said, something no high jumper would do in later decades after Dick Fosbury introduced the revolutionary Fosbury Flop, going over shoulders first, torso and head skyward. (as an interesting aside, I watched the 1976 Montreal Olympics with Dick Fosbury when I lived in Eugene and was blessed to hear his commentary while Dwight Stones was going for the gold. We sat in a friend’s backyard, drinking beer and watching Dwight with rapture on our faces. I remember it well. In fact 30 years later, I tracked Dick down in Ketcham, Idaho where he owned a surveying company and was able to convince him to do a feature for Fox Sports Net that I produced, called, “Where are They Now.” Great memories indeed.)

At fifteen Faust cleared the bar at 6-8, setting a new standard for his age group, and as he approached age 17 he was recruited to jump at UCLA. Faust lasted a month there, dropped out, and transferred to nearby Occidental College. He had been valedictorian of his high school class, but school now was all confusion to him. The seven-year plan to reach the Olympics still drove him, and he worked out twice a day, all the while feeling pangs of guilt about ‘the achievement complex.’ Jumping was his ambition and salvation; he infused it with religious symbolism.

Each jump had its own ritual; what he called the cycle of repair. He looked at the crossbar and saw the crucifix. As he approached, he imagined jumping into the arms of a loving God. He rose with penance, sorry for his sins, and descended with gratitude, thankful for love and forgiveness. Over and over again, penance and gratitude, sin and redemption, repairing himself inside and out, jumping a hundred times a day. It was all deeply personal and private. He never talked about it to others, never boasted that God was on his side. His heavenly thanks were not for how high he jumped, but simply for the act of jumping at all.

By July 1, 1960, Faust was exceptional enough to compete at the Olympic Trials at Stanford. Everything felt right that day. He was struck by the beautiful care with which Payton Jordan, the Stanford track coach, had prepared the stadium. The grass was a velvet cut of green, the track smooth and flawless, the takeoff area with just the right bounce, the landing pit soft and inviting. Hours before the competition, Faust went off by himself to meditate, visualizing his jumps. There were 13 competitors, led by John Thomas, the amazing leaper from Boston U., and Charley Dumas, the defending Olympic champ. All the attention was on Thomas, as he set a new world record, but there was a lively contest for the other tow Olympic slots. When the height reached 6-9, 7 jumpers were still around. Faust nicked the crossbar on his first 2 jumps and was on the verge of elimination. ‘I started visualizing the prayer part,’ he said later of his preparations for the 3rd try. ‘I dedicated the next jump to all the people who might be on crutches around the world. But it was not a trade-off with God. It was a feeling of, Why leave anyone behind?

He cleared the bar with ease. And then 6-10, and 6-11, and finally he soared over 7 feet for the first time in his life and clinched a spot on the team.

That moment, as it turned out, was the Olympic peak for jumping Joe Faust. A few day later he strained a disc in his lower back. Determined to fulfill the 7-year plan, he gutted it out at practice meets in Oregon and Switzerland, wincing in pain but showing enough to keep his place on the team. He was still only 17 when he reached Rome, the youngest man on the track and field squad, and he soaked it all in, joining the throngs who saw Pope John XXIII at the Vatican, mixing with foreign athletes, even coming to the aid of Leif Kvist, a young man from Sweden who had lost all his money and had been standing outside the gates of the village, broke and starving, until Joe brought him food from the bounteous Olympic cafeteria.

Then came the day of competition, the anticlimax, a jump of 6-4 ¾ and no more. He returned to California and wanted to become a Trappist monk. He fasted outside the gates of the Abbey of New Clairvaux up near Vina for 3 days and asked to be called Zachary, but could not clear his mind of images of a woman he had fallen in love with decided the monastic calling was not for him, not exactly. Over the years, he married, had children, got divorced, and struggled with questions he could not answer. He wondered what purpose God could invest in a molecule 2,000 feet underground. What part did that molecule play in the scheme of life? It was a hole in his theological construct that remained unfilled for years, until it cam to him that a single molecule had its own graceful movement in the universe. ‘That lonely molecule is not so lonely,’ he decided.

Nearly a half century after his moment in Rome, Faust, in his mid 60’s, lived a monastic life alone in a cramped room in a cottage nestled on the side of a scrubby tan hill just off the 710 Freeway not far from Cal State, L.A.. Inside his room, he had a table, a filing cabinet (folders on new high-jump landing pit designs, trash technology, mind and spirit notes), a shelf of books (The Joy of Mathematics, The Sistine Chapel, The Child’s Creation of a Pictorial World), another shelf of food (cereal, bananas, 7-grain bread, grapes, oranges), a small refrigerator, a sofa bed, and a computer. There were makeshift shelves and a grill out near the side door. It seemed all he needed. He was like a single molecule of Olympic history buried deep underground, alone, but still moving, and in his movement connected to everything else. Once he knew Rafer Johnson, Wilma Rudolph, Cassius Clay.

The backyard had the marking of a scavenger, a cluttered junkyard of collected planks of oak, sheets of plywood, scraps of iron, chunks of cement, bricks, stones, all arranged in a haphazard yet loving array. Down at the bottom third of the yard there was a clearing with an old mattress on the ground, and a further look showed two poles rising at either end, a bamboo crossbar nearby, and a worn path in the dirt coming from the left toward the tattered mattress. With no one watching, Joe Faust was high-jumping still, with a sore knee but bounce in his step, practicing his cycle of repair, rising with penance, clearing the crucifix, absolving his sins, descending with gratitude.

================

Just a footnote in the Olympic lore, but as a Culver City man, I thought worth recalling and giving some reverence to a man who might have won a medal had it not been for his damaged disc. I believe he may be the only Culver City person to ever compete in an Olympics. Not positive of that however.

This might be the most I have typed since my last term paper in 10th grade for Patty Logsdon. Whew..See you.

Rick Weingarten


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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Vol. 2 No. 22 October 1960 The Season Just Keeps Rolling Along

OCTOBER, 1960

The Rome Olympics are history, but the season goes on in Europe. The headline on the cover of this issue of TFN reads, “Bolotnikov 28:18.8, Brumel 7-2 ¼, Rowe 62-8½.” The first is a world record, the other two are European records. Pytor Bolotnikov, having followed in the steps of his mentor, Vladimir Kuts, as Olympic 10,000 champion, now eyes Kuts' world records at 5000 and 10,000.


On September 28 he runs a 1500 PR of 3:47.4 then returns the next day for a shot at the 10K record. His 28:32.4 misses by two seconds. On October 7 at halftime of a soccer match in Kiev, he takes on Kuts' 13:35.0 5K mark. Running without significant competition, he clocks 13:38.1. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again is his motto. On a warm, windless afternoon on October 15, again in Kiev, he leaves Russia's best runners behind early and achieves his goal at 10,000, clocking 28:18.8 to break his hero's record by 11.4 seconds. How far distance running has come can be measured by combining the best 5000 times of two of the greatest, Paavo Nurmi and Emil Zatopek. Together they total 28:25.2, 6.4 seconds slower than Bolotnikov's effort this day.
Valeriy Brumel, the precocious Soviet 18 year old, marks himself as a threat to John Thomas' WR with a 7-2¼. Apparently on the same day he has a very close miss at 7-4 1/8. Time will tell, but it seems to be on the kid's side. Great Britain's Arthur Rowe atones for a disappointing Olympics with a put of 62-8½, an effort not only a European record, but equal to the fourth best ever, tying him with Dave Davis.
Europe or anywhere else for that matter hadn't seen much of Herb Elliot for the last couple years. The great Aussie makes up for that starting in mid-September. He races 11 times in 19 days, winning all but one, including three classic races with Sweden's Dan Waern.
The journey begins in London on September 14 where he runs a mile in 3:58.6, leaving a surprisingly good Terry Sullivan of Rhodesia well behind in 4:00.9. Three days later in Cardiff he attempts to finish in a dead heat with Tony Blue. The judges give him the win anyway in 1:52.8. The first of the matches with Waern is the next day in Goteborg at 1500. Blue, the pace setter, takes them out too fast; 54 and 1:54. Elliot is content to stay two seconds off that pace. When Blue drops off on the third lap, the race is all Elliot's or so it would seem. He opens up five meters on the backstretch and spectators entertain visions of his Olympic finish two weeks earlier. But Waern, who barely missed making the Olympic final, has other ideas. To the delight of the hometown fans, he catches Elliot at the bell. They battle around the curve and into the straight. Down the homestretch they come, Elliot on the inside, Waern on his shoulder. With ten meters to go, Elliot leads by inches. Waern can't hold on and the race belongs to Elliot by a meter. His 3:38.4 is his fourth fastest. Waern's 3:38.6 is the Swedish record.
Fans don't have to wait long for the next match between these two as it comes two days later over a mile at Malmo. Once again Blue is the pacesetter. It appears that he has mastered even pacing. Three laps go off in 60.5 each, reaching the bell in 3:01.5. Waern, Albie Thomas and Elliot follow in that order. Spurred by the wildly cheering fans, Waern takes the lead and begins a long drive. This time it is Elliot hanging on. At the top of the straight he moves into the lead and ever so slowly pulls away for a narrow win 3:58.6 to 3:59.0.
Now Elliot is off for Dublin, where two days later he will toe the starting line in an 880 against two other Olympic champions, Rome's 800 winner Peter Snell and Melbourne's 1500 champion Ron Delany, the obvious favorite of the Irish fans. No details of the race are given, but Elliot can do no better than fourth. Snell takes it 1:47.9 with Delany second at 1:48.2 (an Irish record), the same time as Tony Blue. Elliot takes his only loss of the tour with a 1:48.4.
Having lost to Snell at the New Zelander's distance, Elliot looks forward to meeting him on the same track the next day at his distance, a mile. This time the heavy lifting falls to Albie Thomas who takes the field through a 1:57.0. Lazlo Tabori leads at the bell in 2:59.0. At this point Elliot makes sure it is over early. He leaves no doubt about who is the king at this distance, winning in 3:57.0. Terry Sullivan breaks four for the first time in placing second in 3:59.8, a tick ahead of Gordon Pirie. (*editor's note This is possibly the first 4 minute mile by a native born African runner.. When I lived in Zimbabwe from 1982-85, Sullivan was still there in the construction business.) Tabori is fourth at 4:00.7. Snell places fifth in 4:01.5. Any disappointment that may have resulted from this loss is mitigated by the fact thatn this is a 9 second improvement on his PR, perhaps an indication of better things to come.
Elliot fills the rest of the month with less competitive races. He wins a 1000 meter race in Glasgow (2:20.7) on the 24th. The 28th sees him in London for a mile (3:59.8). On the 30th he takes another 1000 in 2:23.1 in Manchester. October 1 is taken up with a 1320 in Birmingham (2:57.8). This would seem like a lot, but there is one more page to be turned before the book on Herb Elliot's magical 1960 season can be closed. Tomorrow Dan Waern will be waiting for him in Stockholm for a race at 1000 meters, an event in which the Swede set the world record of 2:18.1 two years ago before lowering it to 2:17.8 last year.
This will be no easy task for Elliot. It has been an intense stretch in which he has raced 11 times in 2½ weeks. Popular as Elliot is, the Stockholm crowd will be wildly enthusiastic for the hometown boy, Waern. Not only is this Waern's crowd, it is probably his best distance. Herb will not be able to mail this one in.
Chances for a world record go out the window right away. The plan was to have a rabbit take the field through a fast 400 and then Per Knuts, “a good Swedish half miler” was to take over. When Knuts fails to take over after a pedestrian 55.4 opening go around, Waern finds himself in the lead about 500 meters before he wants to be. His 57.6 (1:53.0) puts the race in the tactical category. There is no description of the race other than those splits, but both finish strongly with Elliot the winner, 2:19.1 to 2:19.4. This was the year's final race for both. Elliot is off to bask in Australia's spring and summer while Waern looks forward to a season of ice fishing.
And yes, there are still Americans in Europe. Olympic 400 champ, Otis Davis, tangles with silver medalist Carl Kaufmann twice.


The first, in Cologne, is closer than their Olympic finish. They are given a tie at 45.7. Four days later in Wuppertal, Kaufmann wins 46.5 to 46.7. Previous to these races, Davis had been nipped by George Kerr in Amsterdam, 47.0 for both.
The balance in the season long competition between Lee Calhoun and Willie May has shifted. After Calhoun's ever so close victory in the Olympics, May wins three over the Olympic champ, then three over Olympic finalist Keith Gardner of Jamaica.
Imagine that you have come to the meet in Paris on Oct. 2 to see the great American pole vaulter, Don Bragg. Then imagine your shock when you see him fail at 13-9. The competition is won at 14-1, but wait, there's more. Bragg is going to give the fans their money's worth with an exhibition. He clears 15-1 and everyone goes home happy.
In the Cologne meet Ernie Cunliffe takes the 1500 in 3:48.0. Five days later he tangles with Kerr in an 800 in Frankfort and comes out on the short end, 1:48.9 to 1:49.1.
Perhaps when it is all said and done, the American who will go home with the best memories of the Europe tour will be Max Truex.


Coming off his great performance in the Olympic 10,000, he has no let down. In Cologne he wins the 3000 in an American record of 8:03.6. He is cheered vigorously by the home town crowd as he is wearing a German Olympic uniform. He wins two 5000's in Germany before suffering his only defeat of the tour, a three mile in London where he is third, four tenths behind the winner. His last race is in Paris where he is supposed to meet French star Michel Bernard over two miles. Bernard pulls out and Max runs near to the American record with an 8:44.2. A great Olympic race and four wins in five tries afterward. Good job, Max.
Items gleaned from various columns: Lee Calhoun, Ron Morris, Parry O'Brien, Tom Murphy and Rafer Johnson have retired. Jerry Siebert almost added his name to the list, but has decided to run one more year as a member of the Santa Clara Valley Youth Village, saying, “I want one more crack at Snell.” The SCVYV could be pretty good in the middle distances. Jack Yerman and Ernie Cunliffe may wear there colors next season. Cunliffe, now a graduate student at Stanford, just became engaged......Carl Kaufmann, silver medalist in the 400 at 21, has decided that track and field is not the fast track to big money. He will devote his energies to a singing career...*editor Wasn't this Lauer who became the C&W singer?....The Styron twins are following coach Lew Hartzog from NE Louisiana to Southern Illinois.....Jim Dupree, feeling a lack of support from his coach at New Mexico, is joining them at SIU.....Hammer thrower Al Hall has decided not to devote full time to his job as a chicken inspector. He will continue his track career. Bill Dellinger will take a year off from competition. He will continue to run however, with an eye towards 1962.....Deacon Jones is a multi-talented guy. Aside from competing in the steeplechase in Rome, he kept his teammates looking sharp by cutting their hair. “I've been a licensed barber since 1950.”.....We won't see Phil Coleman on the boards this winter. He is eschewing competition in favor of working on his PhD at the University of Illinois......Add Glenn Davis and Ray Norton to the list of those who won't be back. Both will play football; Davis for the Lions, Norton for the 49ers. Rafer Johnson, though retiring, will not join them in the NFL. He squelches the rumor that he will play for the Rams, saying that he hasn't played football since 1954 at Kingsburg High......Billy Mills has been named captain of the Kansas cross country team.....If you are waiting to see Olympic 100 meter gold medalist, Armin Hary, in the leading role in three non-sports films, you will be disappointed. He demanded $23,800 for each film from the company that held the option and was turned down. Armin is now spending time writing his memoirs......500 German boys and girls were sent to Rome as winners of a nationwide contest. They camped in the outskirts of the city and rooted on their favorites from the standing room area at either end of the stadium. Their most notable shout of Teutonic support was, “Hoy, hoy, hoy, Lauer, Lauer, Lauer, cha, cha, cha!” Say it a few times and it grows on you. Not to be outdone, the British fans showed their support with the more traditional, “Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate, P-I-R-I-E, Pirie, Pirie, Pirie!”.....Apparently whatever the cost of the Track and Field New tour was, it was money well spent. Many of the group were housed at the luxurious Rome YMCA.
Did You Say Rome YMCA? Two Versions Below


Posh Version
American Version

Monday, February 20, 2012

Vol. 2 No. 21 Photo Collection from Rome 1960

I just wanted to put many of the photos that we've used in the past two weeks on one page for readers to scroll through in one place. Not all are from Rome, but most are. Enjoy.


























George Kerr, Ernie Cunliffe, Tony Blue in 800 prelim















































Tamara Press


Jim Grelle, Lazlo Tabori, Bob Schul, Cordner Nelson on Nelson's 80th birthday

Tabori and Gunnar Nielson

V 14 N. 19 Query on Dave and Don Styron

 Asking any of you who read this blog if you know if Dave and Don Styron who ran at  NE Louisiana and Southern Illinois in the early 1960...