Visiting Fireman

On his way to the U.S. is the world's fastest distance runner: long-legged, hollow-cheeked, 24-year-old Gunder Haegg (rhymes with egg) of Gavle, Sweden.

Not since Finn Paavo Nurmi's memorable visit nearly a generation ago has a European athlete started for the U.S. with a better build-up than Gunder Haegg. Last summer he broke ten world's records at distances ranging from 1,500 to 5,000 meters (slightly over three miles). From sketchy reports U.S. track fans pieced together an extraordinary figure: a fireman by trade, so thin he looks like an inmate of a Jap prison camp, and yet rugged enough to run a mile in 4:04.6, two miles in 8:47.8, three miles in 13:32.4.

Four Minutes Flat. Unlike Nurmi, Haegg has no fancy theories about his speed. A bashful, homespun farmer's son, reared in the wooded hills of northern Sweden, he attributes his flawless style to the springy forest paths, thickly padded with pine needles, where he first learned to run. He believes he is smooth and swift because he enjoys running more than anything else in the world except playing his accordion and doing the hambo, a native Swedish dance.

When a reporter once asked him if he had a slow pulse like Nurmi's (46), Gunder Haegg admitted that he had never bothered to notice (he has since discovered that it is low--48 at rest). He also scoffs at stop watches, diets and training rules. "I run," says he, "the way my muscles and nerves tell me. When I feel the time has come to sprint, I sprint."

Like Babe Ruth, gaunt and gainly Gunder Haegg has become popular with Swedish newsmen because of his ability to call his shots in advance. Last summer, during a track meet in Stockholm's Stadion, he announced that he would break the world's record for the mile the next day. He did.

The summer before, after being suspended from amateur competition for ten months (because he was unable to account to the Swedish Athletic Union for about $4 worth of listed travel expenses), Haegg retired to the hills of his native Jaemtland, vowed that he would be back to avenge that disgrace. Two days after his suspension was lifted he cracked the mile record, 48 hours later the twomile. Gunder Haegg's latest prediction: he will some day run a mile in four minutes flat, thinks California is the place where he might do it.

The U.S. Amateur Athletic Union, eager to have Haegg match strides with Super-Runner Gregory Rice in the national outdoor championships in New York City June 19-20, finally got him priority to cross the Atlantic by plane. But last week, on the eve of his scheduled departure, a Stockholm news despatch cryptically announced that Gunder Haegg had left for the U.S. on a Swedish tanker.

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