Greatest Mile

Greatest Mile "They should certainly do 4:10 and if they do not worry too much about each other, they should break Jules Ladoumegue's world record of 4:09.2. It is going to be the best mile race of the year." Princeton's track coach, Matt Geis, thus called the turn three days before the sixth annual Oxford-Cambridge v. Princeton-Cornell track meet last week. In only one respect was Coach Geis's prediction awry. The race between Jack Lovelock of Oxford and William ("Bonny") Bonthron, Princeton's track captain-elect, proved to be not the best mile race of the year but the greatest of all time. The British team was already on its way to a final 4-to-8 defeat when Bonthron Lovelock, John Hazen (Cornell) and Forbes Horan (Cambridge) went to the mark. For a week Bonthron, a junior from Detroit, winner of this year's intercollegiate 1,500-metre event, and Lovelock, a slim New Zealander from Dunedin where he ran three years for Otago University, had been sizing each other up. As a medical student, Jack Lovelock did not fail to notice with respect the power ful back muscles which the Princetonian had developed with a medicine ball to such an extent that his arms swing wider than is orthodox when running. Bonthron knew that Lovelock had run a mile against Yale-Harvard week before in 4:12.6, his best time, and was benefiting by the exhilaration which athletes usually feel for the first few days in a strange land. After the gun cracked, Hazen set the pace for the first quarter-mile, Bonthron and Lovelock at his heels. Officials and athletes under bright umbrellas in Palmer Stadium's centre field shook their heads. The runners were going much too fast. In the third quarter Horan moved out front. It proved to be the slowest part of the race, but fast enough to prevent Horan from finishing. Then Bonthron, a bit ahead of Lovelock, took the lead. The event was now between them. In the back stretch of the last lap, Lovelock was running smoothly, holding himself in. Then Bonthron let loose. Lovelock, with less effort, held his own. For five steps on the final turn they ran shoulder to shoulder. And then Lovelock swept out front with a terrific sprint. Bonthron bowed his close-cropped head, futilely pounded his spiked feet as Lovelock crossed the tape leading by seven strides. The time: 4:07.6.

Six thousand spectators were roaring crazily as the Oxonian jogged another lap to cool out. But not without accolade was Bonny Bonthron. Though he had suffered his first collegiate defeat he, too, had broken the previous world's record by .5 sec. and after an hour's rest his brawny, black-haired legs were strong enough for another feat: he ran the half-mile in 1:53 and won it.

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