Ill Will

From iron-grey clouds a bitterly cold rain fell on 5,324 athletes from six nations. The Communist daily L'Humanite had invited them to Paris' Le Tremblay race track to spread international good will (and Communist Party publicity). The good will had failed to materialize.

Sports editors from rival papers kicked because, they said, L'Humanite approved the entry only of French athletes of the proper pink political complexion. At the field itself 10,006 soggy sports fans, who had paid 10 francs each, groused at the political speeches. There was nothing about the races themselves to cheer them up. In the five-kilometer event, half of the huge starting field of 600 dropped out before the end. Many of those remaining were a full lap behind. At the finish: 100 runners crossed the line in such an inextricable melee that nobody could tell who won.

The big event of the day was a 2,500-meter race for "women aces," featuring 40 French entries and seven Russians. The Russian entries fell into two types: the gaunt, harassed and rangy (like Champion Irene Zaitseva), and those built like truck drivers (two of them were, in fact, truck drivers).

Before the race, the Russians had been briefed on the peculiar French starting technique. Because undisciplined French athletes cannot be made to line up quietly, the ideal French starter is one who can surprise his runners while they are all bending down to tie shoelaces. The pudgy little starter at Le Tremblay last week was one of the best. Casually, as great globules of water dripped from his mustache, he engaged the girls in a long, rambling conversation about the weather.

They're Off! Suddenly, in the midst of it, he fired his gun. The seven Russians stared blankly as the French girls scooted down the track. Then the Russians caught on. Their faces set in stern concentration, their legs pumping like pistons in a Magnitogorsk factory, they charged down the track, past the limp bunting on the grandstand, past the mudstreaked posters advertising the virtues of L'Humanite and the Communist Party.

At 300 meters, neither slackening nor quickening their punishing pace, they passed the mesdemoiselles. Some nine minutes later in regimented single file, with Champion Zaitseva in the lead, all seven crossed the finish line, 50 yards ahead of the first Frenchwoman. Six other French girls had quit cold in the first 1,000 meters. "The Russians were too formidable," said one. "Anyway it was too wet and I wanted to get home."

As a wag set off the siren which means foul in horse racing, even L'Humanite's editors seemed to think the Russian sweep had been rather too much of a good thing. But in their shoddy, Left-Bank hotel, the Russian ladies explained it: "The French women do not plan. We won because we work and plan."

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