Sportsmen of the Year

Every year the Amateur Athletic Union awards the Sullivan Medal to the U. S. athlete "who . . . has done most during the year to advance the cause of sportsmanship." Last week the A. A. U. announced its 1933 medalist. He is Kansas University's crack middle-distance runner, Glenn Cunningham, who at the age of 8 was so badly burned in a schoolhouse fire that he was never expected to walk again. To develop his scarred legs he took up running, even learned to play football. But because he developed into such an expert trackman coaches forbade him to play football for fear he would get hurt.

Last year Glenn Cunningham ran practically every indoor or outdoor race he could find in the U. S. and Europe. He was beaten only twice, never in the mile, his best distance. On tour he carried his school books with him, studied hard enough to make good grades. He is 24, a senior, plans entering medical school or teaching physical education.

Closer than many of Glenn Cunningham's races was the balloting which gave him the medal. He received 611 votes. Only one vote behind him was another crack middle-distance runner, Princeton's Bill Bonthron. Like Cunningham, he is most famed as a miler, but they never raced together. Bonthron amazed the sport world in the Princeton-Cornell v. Oxford-Cambridge meet last July when he ran close second to Oxford's Jack Love lock in a record-breaking mile, then stepped out and won the half-mile in 1:53.

The Sullivan committee found that Cunningham "proved himself a good sportsman in running two races in every meet and sometimes three against the leading European middle-distance champions. He could have refused and would have been justified in doing so. . . ." Of Bonthron : "He has been the fighting spirit of the Princeton track team. He gave up an opportunity to compete in individual events to run as a member of the university relay team in order to enhance the chances of his teammates winning. A fine example of unselfishness and team spirit."

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