Millrose Men

Six new faces were to greet indoor track followers at New York's 30th annual Millrose Games last week. It might as well have been five because two of them had the same face, being identical twins. Of the others, one was Hungarian, one Italian, one Japanese, one Negro.

Sueo Ohe of Keio University with only five days to accustom himself to a board runway, indoor performing, New York City and new vaulting poles, smilingly hoisted himself through the din of the evening hours up over the rising crossbar until World Record Holder George Varoff of the University of Oregon (14 ft., 6 1/2 in.), Olympic Champion Earle Meadows of Southern California (14 ft., 3 1/4 in.) and five other contestants had tumbled defeated into the sawdust landing pit. Ohe sailed easily over 14 ft. 3 in. for a new meet record. A jury of sportswriters voted him the Rodman Wanamaker International Trophy for the meet's finest performance.

The Italian, Luigi Beccali, Olympic 1,500-metre champion in 1932, chose not to run, wanting more time to train. The Hungarian, Miklos Szabo, who recently broke the world record for 2,000 metres, canceled his entry after he caught cold walking in Central Park. The identical twins, Blaine & Wayne Rideout, students from North Texas State Teachers College, did run, but fared badly.

Jim Herbert, a Negro employe of the New York Curb Exchange, whirled around in the Millrose 600 so rapidly that he left behind two national champions and the 800-metre Olympic champion, Negro John Woodruff of University of Pittsburgh. Catapulted into national publicity when one of them beat Don Lash, world record holder, in the second fastest outdoor two-mile race ever run in the U. S., at the Sugar Bowl Games at New Orleans last month, the arrival of the Rideout Twins for the northern winter track season sent researchers scurrying for data on identical twins in sport.

Though there are 2,000,000 pairs of twins in the U. S., 30% of them identical, cases of identical twins who are able athletes are rare. Harvard had her famed hockey-playing Bigelows in 1928-29. Yale had her Driscolls nearly 20 years ago, one an oarsman, one a trackman, neither brilliant. Indiana State Teachers College had twin sisters named Sonafelt who were so anxious to have identical records in everything that one, a much better high diver than the other, would wriggle into her sister's place at swimming meets and dive for both. Best twin legend is that of the Sherman boys of Brooklyn, Charlie & Joe, who are supposed to have won a cross-country race in 1920 when one twin ran the first half, the other the second.

P: "That's crazy as hell!" was the Rideouts' reply last week to stories that they somehow tricked Don Lash at New Orleans. Racing on boards for the first time at the Millrose Games last week, Blaine Rideout ran off the inside of the track on the fifth lap of the 1,000-yd. run, pitched headlong, did not finish. Both Rideouts ran in the two-mile an hour later. Blaine fought with Lash for second place for 16 laps while Indiana's Tommy Deckard built up an unbeatable lead. Getting a pain in his side, Blaine fell back, was lapped by his twin who also weakened and the two crossed the finish line together in the ruck.

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