California's Year

(See front cover)

Since 1920, California teams have won the I. C. A. A. A. A.* track meet every year but one. Southern California won in 1931 and when teams from 35 Eastern colleges entrained for Berkeley, Calif, last week, for the first meet ever held on the Pacific Coast, they were all sure Southern California would win again with Stanford second. The meet resolved itself therefore into a series of individual contests about which some doubt remained. Most spectacular were four: 100-yd. dash, quarter-mile, half-mile, pole vault.

What the people in the University of California's new Edwards Stadium hoped to see in the 100-yd. dash was the rubber race between Frank Wykoff of Southern California, intercollegiate champion in 1931, joint holder of the world's record (9.5 sec.) and Bob Kiesel, University of California sophomore, who lost one race to Wykoff this year, then beat him in the California Intercollegiates. Wykoff won both his heats with nonchalance, looking backwards for the last 30 yards. Kiesel, who had said he would not compete for a place on this year's Olympic team because he is tired of running, took his first heat but in the semi-final when he came galloping down the track with his head bobbing and his heavy shoulders wobbling from side to side, he was a step behind a little Cornell sprinter named Dick Hardy. Nevertheless, it was Kiesel whom Wykoff had to beat in the final. He did it neatly in 9.9, with Hardy third.

The results of the quarter and half were in doubt, not because anyone expected Stanford's crack middle-distance man Ben Eastman to be beaten in either, but because they wanted to see just how near the currently accepted world's records his times would be. Only a few people in the crowd, friends of Eastman who knew that he was recovering from a heavy cold, guessed he might be below his best form. In the quarter, they thought Karl Warner of Yale might make Eastman work. If that race tired him, Eastman would have trouble against Ben Hallowell, a seasoned Harvard runner, in the half-mile. In the start of the quarter, at the pole position, Eastman had to battle through a bunched field to take the lead after 50 yards. Close behind him at the turn was a little Pennsylvania man, Bill Carr, who had started in the sixth lane. Rounding the turn, Eastman shook off the pack but he could not shake off Carr. Geared to a quicker stride than Eastman, Carr, who had never before last week run a quarter-mile in less than 48 sec., caught the Stanford man in the last 100 yards, beat him to the finish by a step, in 47 sec.

Eastman had good reason to be tired by that race. If he was, he managed to conceal it. After an hour's rest, he started near the front in the half-mile and took the lead after 400 yards. It was Hallowell who was tired, after losing a terrific mile to Mangan of Cornell. Turner of Michigan and Hudder Dawson, the Princeton captain, challenged Eastman in the stretch but neither could whittle down his lead. Winner by ten yards, Eastman's time was 1:51.9, or .3 sec. slower than the world's record and one second slower than his own best time.

In the pole vault, Bill Graber of Southern California was defending his championship but he has had a lame back this spring. Bill Miller of Stanford, injured early in the season, lately vaulted 13 ft. 11 1/2 in., the best mark of the season. George Pool, University of California captain, had the advantage of knowing his own runway and vaulting box. Yale had three crack vaulters of whom Wirt Thompson was probably the best. Graber, Miller and Thompson all stuck at 13 ft. 10 in. Another Yale man, Frank Pierce, and George Jefferson of Los Angeles, tied for fourth.

This is California's year in sport. While Southern California was beating Stanford 62 3/4 to 33 for the I. C. A. A. A. A. championship last week, with Yale third and California fourth, Helen Wills Moody of San Francisco and Ellsworth Vines Jr. of Pasadena were winning the two most important singles championships in tennis at Wimbledon. A University of California crew which had three weeks ago won the intercollegiate championship at Poughkeepsie was preparing to win the right to defend its 1928 Olympic championship in final trials at Worcester, Mass. Meanwhile at Long Beach, Calif., last week, more track athletes were competing in the semi-final Olympic trials.

Hector Dyer of the Los Angeles A. C., only crack sprinter in the U. S. who stands up straight instead of crouching at the start, won the 200-metre race and twice equalled the world's record--10.4 sec.--for 100 metres.

At sectional Olympic trials in Evanston, Ill., Eddie Tolan, famed Negro sprinter from Michigan, equalled the Olympic record--10.6 sec.--for 100 metres. Five other Olympic records were equalled or broken.

A third place or better in the semi-finals qualified for the final U. S. Olympic team trials at Palo Alto, July 15 and 16. The team trials would be the last preliminary before the grand climax of California's sporting summer, a climax for which California has been preparing since 1923, the Xth Olympic Games which start in Los Angeles July 30, last till Aug. 14.

To prepare for this year's Olympics, California appropriated $1,000,000, Los Angeles $1,250,000. Los Angeles, whose Olympic Stadium holds 105,000, built an Olympic Auditorium to hold 12,000, a 2,000-metre rowing course with a $10,500 stadium at the finish at Long Beach. Twelve miles southwest of Los Angeles are 550 pink-&-white two-room bungalows specially designed to house 2,000 men contestants from 58 nations in a 331-acre "Olympic Village" with five miles of streets, a hospital, an amphitheatre, 40 private kitchens equipped to give foreign contestants native rations. Expenses for the U. S. team this year are estimated at $350,000 of which Treasurer George W. Graves of the Olympic Committee three weeks ago announced that only $45,000 had been raised.

By last week, foreign contestants to the Olympic games were all either on their way to Los Angeles or about to start. The Finnish team practiced in Paris, then boarded ship for the U. S. With the team was famed Marathoner Paavo Nurmi. Barred for professionalism last week, he still hoped officials would allow him to compete when he arrived. Japanese competitors were on the way. When they arrive at Los Angeles, they will find a tub large enough to hold 15 men, such as Japanese athletes prefer for bathing. French athletes, disgusted by the refusal of the U. S. Government to allow them to have wine with their meals, were still in France. They were planning, while in the U. S., to sip 125 grams of Cuban sugar syrup every day for stimulus.

In England, the Cambridge crew, rowing for the Leander Club, won the Grand Challenge Cup in a Thames race at Henley for the right to represent England in the Olympic crew races. Lord David Burghley, famed English and Empire hurdling champion, was named captain of the British track team that was selected last week.

First large group of foreign contestants to arrive in the U. S. contained 18 members of the Swedish Olympic team headed by Count Carl Bonde, master of horse to King Gustaf V. Twenty-five more Swedes were expected later. At Forli, Italy, Premier Mussolini bade farewell to the Italian team of 108, reminded them that they were "ambassadors extraordinary of Italy to the United States." Missing from the Polish team that sailed from Gdnyia last week was Kusocinski, famed distance runner who lately beat Nurmi's record for the four-mile run. He thought the boat was too small, planned to sail from Cherbourg on the Mauretania upon whose spacious decks he can prowl freely. Most famed of 21 Argentines who arrived in Manhattan last week was Jose Ribas, who holds the world's record for 30,000 metres. Splashing in swimming pools at Los Angeles, where he has been since March, was old Duke Kahanamoku, famed swimmer of Hawaii. He was hoping to qualify once more for the U. S. Olympic team, as he did in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928 (a record).

Even if 42-year-old Duke Kahanamoku qualified, he could not help the U. S. team win. The U. S. has never won, never will. Nor will any other nation. Olympic games are scored officially only for individual events. Nothing counts except a first place and there is no such thing, officially, as a team score. Unofficially, to satisfy readers who want to know which country has the best athletes, sportswriters have invented a team score system on the basis of which the U. S. won the 1928 Olympics with 131 points to 62 for Finland, 59 for Germany.

Outstanding competitor in this year's Olympic 1,500-metre run should be Gene Venzke, 23-year-old graduate this spring from the Pottstown, Pa., High School. Last winter Venzke, who used to run to work in a Reading, Pa., steel mill, ran an indoor mile in 4:10, breaking Nurmi's record by 2 sec. Another world record breaker is George Spitz, Jr., 20-year-old sophomore at New York University. At a Boston meet last winter he jumped 6 ft. 8 1/2 in. in the eccentric manner which he acquired practicing at home, in Flushing, L. I. Almost certain of a place on the U. S. team last week was Joe McCluskey, Fordham steeplechaser, who learned about distance running when he was a newspaper delivery boy in Manchester, Conn. The U. S. has the world's record shotputter, Leo Sexton, and a huge blond Californian, Herman Brix, who, experts think, is just as good.

If U. S. track coaches had been trying to pick an Olympic team last week, all these would have been on it. So would Eddie Tolan; Hurdler Percy Beard, who is a chemical engineering instructor at Alabama Polytechnical Institute; Hector Dyer, Bill Graber, Pen Hallowell. Coaches might have had sharp differences of opinion as to the rest of the team but there was one other name which they surely would have chosen--Benjamin Bangs Eastman.

Long (6 ft., 1 3/4 in.), thin (156 lb.), blond, with horned-rim glasses, Ben Eastman lacks the appearance of a champion runner. He looked even less like one the day he won the quarter-mile in a class track meet when he was a Stanford freshman. He ran in sneakers. But his time was 51 sec. Stanford's seasoned track coach, Robert Lyman ("Dink") Templeton, was so much impressed that he took Eastman in hand, had him go away for the summer to put on weight. Last year, running in the intercollegiates for the first time, Eastman lost to Vic Williams in the quarter-mile, won the half-mile handily. By that time, everyone knew that he was a great middle distance man but no one anticipated Eastman's doings this spring. Late in March, in a dual meet against the Los Angeles Athletic Club, he won the 440 in 46.4 sec., a full second faster than Ted Meredith's world record which since 1916 had been regarded as unbreakable. Two weeks later, Ben Eastman won a half-mile race in 1:51.3, or .3 sec. faster than the world's record made by Dr. Otto Peltzer of Germany in 1926. Since then, in addition to his exploits last week, Eastman has run another quarter-mile in 47.1, a half-mile in 1:50.9, 800 meters in 1:50 (.6 sec. faster than Sera Martin's world's record).

Unlike Runners Venzke and McCluskey, Ben Eastman never had occasion to trot about his business. His father is president of Southern Pacific-Golden Gate Ferries Co. and Spring Valley Land Co. At Stanford, where his brother Samuel Palmer Eastman Jr. is also on the track team, Ben Eastman majors in economics, plans to go to Stanford's graduate school of business. He belongs to Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, an organization called Skull & Snakes, and the Board of Athletic Control. In May he was elected Captain of the track team. He has no special training methods. He eats what he likes until three hours before a meet when he gobbles steak, tea, custard. Calm, almost lethargic, Eastman's style of running is in character. He contradicts the Indian maxim which says: "White man, body make legs go; red man, legs make body go." His shoulders lilt with his stride but his body does not move and strain, his glasses never wobble on his nose. As Indians are supposed to do, he toes in slightly and, unlike most fast runners, tracks in an absolutely straight line. Eastman lost none of his prestige by losing one race last week. Coaches who saw him breaking other runners' records earlier this spring expect him presently to break his own.

* Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America.

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