NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 1966
Once again a paucity of hard news has forced us to combine two issues of Track and Field News. We will get back to the one issue format in January.
NOVEMBER
Oddly, the most significant cross country race leading up to the NCAA meet took place on Nov. 12, but was only casually covered in one sentence at the end of a column entitled Cross Country Report. That would be the Northern Division championship in which Oregon State's Tracy Smith left Gerry Lindgren of Washington State in the dust by 33 seconds. Inexplicably other meets on that weekend, the Big Ten, the SEC, the WAC, the IC4A, the Central Collegiates and the NCAA college division meet listed team scores and top finishers.
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| Russ Hodge |
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| Bill Toomey |
The top decathlon guys are training in Santa Barbara. Russ Hodge, Bill Toomey and Dave Thoreson share an apartment and train with Paul Herman, Gerry Moro of Canada
and Olaf Lange of West Germany. The lads have been hitting the weight room as measured by Hodge's and Toomey's bench press PRs of 430 and 330. Thoreson, who has high jumped 6-10, has cleared 6-2 with a 20 pound weight vest.......
See Sports Illustrated article April 12, 1971. The Ineligible Married Man by William F. Reed.
I found this googling Dave Thoreson Decathlon. Don't know where it came from. I think our friend Phil Scott may have competed in one of these 30 minute Decathlons on a beach in California. Only he can tell the real story. Phil?
RECORDS FALL IN 30 MINUTE DECATHLON
Back in 1971 California school teacher Dave Thoreson got bored with his training routine. And so he invented a challenging and looney event for decathletes who don't like to wait for scheduled competition days .....The 30 minute decathlon. The rules are simple. All ten events must be contested in order. The athlete must begin the 1500 meter run within 30 minutes of the start of the 100 meters. In August of '71 Dave claimed the WR with 6233. It did not take the two day-event community long to catch on to Thoreson's idea and in 1974 Swede Inge Hermansson took Dave's record away. 30 minute action picked up this summer with Santa Barbara's John Warkentin giving it a crack in August at UCSB. He carme away with the WR 6747 points. John corresponds that "we had about 10 spectators, and after it was over, everyone agreed that it was one of the most exciting events they had witnesses. myself including." John's marks included: 11.2 632 1407 192 53.2 15.3 4602 396 5960 6:00.3. Six weeks later carme the newS that WUG champ Josep Zeilbauer took a crack at the 30 minute affair in Vienna as a special TV exhibition. His 6854 made Warkentin only the American record holder. Rooney Magnusson notes Sepp went to 2.00 hj after 1.90 and also thought he'd cleared 4.20 in the pole vault. It was remeasured at 4.17. His marks (10/3/77) 10.8 647 1489 190 57.2 15.8 4000 417 5762 5:48.0. We now await the first 7000 half-hour decathlon.
UCLA and Kansas will meet in annual dual meets in Los Angeles for the next three years. UCLA has plans to build a Tartan track with seating for 12,500......Speaking of new tracks, we have a couple odd ones for you. The Rose Bowl has a new Grasstex track which measures 386 yards, a concession to space limitations. The opposite is true at Boston College where a Tartan track of 476 yards has been installed. As the university went overboard on the length, perhaps economic considerations affected the width – only six lanes.
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| Gerry Moro |
See Sports Illustrated article April 12, 1971. The Ineligible Married Man by William F. Reed.
I found this googling Dave Thoreson Decathlon. Don't know where it came from. I think our friend Phil Scott may have competed in one of these 30 minute Decathlons on a beach in California. Only he can tell the real story. Phil?
RECORDS FALL IN 30 MINUTE DECATHLON
Back in 1971 California school teacher Dave Thoreson got bored with his training routine. And so he invented a challenging and looney event for decathletes who don't like to wait for scheduled competition days .....The 30 minute decathlon. The rules are simple. All ten events must be contested in order. The athlete must begin the 1500 meter run within 30 minutes of the start of the 100 meters. In August of '71 Dave claimed the WR with 6233. It did not take the two day-event community long to catch on to Thoreson's idea and in 1974 Swede Inge Hermansson took Dave's record away. 30 minute action picked up this summer with Santa Barbara's John Warkentin giving it a crack in August at UCSB. He carme away with the WR 6747 points. John corresponds that "we had about 10 spectators, and after it was over, everyone agreed that it was one of the most exciting events they had witnesses. myself including." John's marks included: 11.2 632 1407 192 53.2 15.3 4602 396 5960 6:00.3. Six weeks later carme the newS that WUG champ Josep Zeilbauer took a crack at the 30 minute affair in Vienna as a special TV exhibition. His 6854 made Warkentin only the American record holder. Rooney Magnusson notes Sepp went to 2.00 hj after 1.90 and also thought he'd cleared 4.20 in the pole vault. It was remeasured at 4.17. His marks (10/3/77) 10.8 647 1489 190 57.2 15.8 4000 417 5762 5:48.0. We now await the first 7000 half-hour decathlon.
UCLA and Kansas will meet in annual dual meets in Los Angeles for the next three years. UCLA has plans to build a Tartan track with seating for 12,500......Speaking of new tracks, we have a couple odd ones for you. The Rose Bowl has a new Grasstex track which measures 386 yards, a concession to space limitations. The opposite is true at Boston College where a Tartan track of 476 yards has been installed. As the university went overboard on the length, perhaps economic considerations affected the width – only six lanes.
DECEMBER
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| Brown and coach Harry Adams |
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| Lindgren |
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| Lawson Leading Brown Up What Is Now Known As Lawson Hill in Lawrence in NCAA Nationals 1965 |
The significance of the Northern Division meet is made clear in the reporting of the NCAA Championship in Lawrence, Kansas. Lindgren, suffering from a sprained ankle in that meet ten days earlier, is now healthy. He opens up an early lead, which Smith can not close to less than 25 yards, and wins by ten seconds. The team title is never in doubt. Villanova coasts to an easy win with 78 points. Kansas State (155), San Jose State (183), Iowa (193) and Washington State (208) follow.
Five days later in Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills, the AAU championship is held on the hilly Pierce College course. Aside from Doug Brown (5th in the NCAA, 8th here), it is a different cast of of characters. Ron Larrieu leads the So. Cal Striders to a four point team victory over the New York AC, as he wins by 47 seconds over John Lawson and Joe Lynch. Kenny Moore of the Oregon TC is fourth.
Bits and pieces: Wonder what it feels like to be 19 and have a book written about your life. Jim Ryun is going to find out in March when the appropriately titled, Jim Ryun Story, published by Track and Field News, will be released. Just checked. Yes, a used hardback copy is available from Amazon.com for $48.95 ($3.99 shipping).
If you prefer the paperback edition, that goes for $179 plus shipping. No, we don't know either.....Just in, the UPI in Europe has announced its Sportsman of the Year award. Jim Ryun was second with 143 votes. Tommie Smith was third with 132. The winner with 232 was a boxer, Casius Clay. Don't feel sorry for the track guys. Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year is Ryun......World Sports, “the British equivalent of Sports Illustrated” has Tommie Smith as its International Sportsman of the Year with Ryun second and Ron Clarke tenth......From The On Your Marks column: “A number of New Zealand distance runners like a drink call Shandy-ale, which is half beer and half lemon-ade”. Our crack team of researchers is working to come up with the recipe. Watch for our next posting......From the Letters to the Editor column: Marian Cyprus of Bronx, NY asks the question that has bothered so many for so long. He writes, “Give me one reason why the discus circle is one foot, two and a half inches larger than the hammer circle.” Fifty years have passed and this inequity still exists. The sport of track and field needs someone like Marian today to stand up against this sort of disparity.
We'll close with a harbinger of an early track season. Jim Hines of Texas Southern ran a 9.3 hundred into a 10 mph gale at the Bluebonnet meet in Houston on Dec. 16. The season can't be far off.
Remember, we meet next Friday at the Dew Drop Inn. While we debate throwing circle diameters and odd sized tracks, perhaps Doris will bring us Shandy-ales all the way around. See you then.
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